In The Absolute Perfection of Crime, a self-styled “family” of burned-out crooks living in a small French seaside town are forced into action when family member Marin returns to the fold after a stint in prison. Reasserting his control with easy confidence, Marin marshals the men (including the novel’s wary narrator) into planning one last magnificent heist—an imaginative and brazen hold-up of the local casino—promising everyone involved that it will be “the absolute perfection of crime.” But human weakness has always undone even the best promises of perfection; and even within a family, where loyalty has the highest value, betrayal always remains a possibility.

Author Tanguy Viel has created in The Absolute Perfection of Crime a visceral and totally singular style as cinematic as it is literary, writing in a staccato yet strangely lyrical manner. With flashes of black humor and a deadpan—and dead-set—attitude toward revenge, the narrator tells his brisk story with all the originality, the toughness, the surprises that one would expect if the novel were transformed into a black-and-white noir film—indeed, the book is an homage to that genre. Both a running monologue of payback and a thrilling, fast-paced crime caper, The Absolute Perfection of Crime is an undeniably unique American debut.