Kleine West Coast Blues #[nn]

A wounded man in a torn, blood-spattered suit grips a pistol in the foreground while two armed pursuers — one in sunglasses and stripped down to his underwear, another in black — close in behind him on a rain-slicked urban highway at night. Jacques Tardi's stark, moody linework perfectly suits this Dutch-language adaptation of Jean-Patrick Manchette's hard-boiled crime fiction, draining the color from the world until only the red of blood punctuates the darkness. Kleine West Coast Blues, published by Oog & Blik in 2007, is a striking collaboration between two masters of French noir who clearly share a taste for desperate men and unforgiving streets.