Total Chaos is a noir as well as a love letter to author Jean-Claude Izzo's hometown of Marseilles. It's also the first in his famous Marseilles trilogy, three novels starring police officer Fabio Montale, a down-and-outer investigating the links between the deaths of his childhood friends Manu and Ugo and the rape and murder of Leila, a young woman whose father came to France from Algeria looking for a better life. Leila was the family's hope, a success story getting her degree in Paris with a bright future ahead of her. She was also dear to Montale, and her death send him into a tailspin.
Izzo treats the reader to loving descriptions of Marseilles along with its people, a mix of European immigrants and their descendants, speaking their own French patois and mixing uneasily with new immigrants from North Africa. Racial tensions make up the baseline pressures of the investigation and of day to day life; Montale must navigate a difficult path between Marseilles underworld, his colleagues in the police and the disaffected youth all around him.
I really enjoyed Total Chaos, more so than most of the crime fiction I've read in the past couple of years. It's gritty and violent and dark, but it also has a lot of heart. Montale loves three women, and each woman has her own sad trajectory, her own story of the way her life has been changed by Marseilles. Montale doesn't so much choose between them as accept what life is going to let him have, and in the end though their lives are colored by tragedy; most of all, he loves Marseilles. His musings are beautiful and a little poetic, just like the book.
This book counts towards the Europa Challenge! Soon I'll have my final review and complete Amante level.
