Loser's Corner / Antonin Varenne ; translated from the French and with notes by Frank Wynne.

First published in the French language as Le Mur, le Kabyle et le Martin by Editions Viviane Hamy, Paris, in 2011.

Parisian street cop and amateur boxer George The Wall Crozat is racking up an impressive knockout record in the world of underground boxing. Failing to translate his small-time boxing success into a decent source of income, however, and unable to finance his nasty prostitution habit with his meager earnings as a police officer, he contemplates a drastic career change. Finally, unable to resist a tempting offer to make some cash using his fists as en enforcer, he unwittingly becomes a pawn in a very dangerous game. Meanwhile, we learn the unsettling story of the young socialist Pascale Verini, exiled to the Algerian front during the 1957 Algerian War. As soon as he gets to Algeria, Verini is transferred to a nightmare farm in deepest Sahara, where North African prisoners of war are mercilessly tortured and killed by the French, away from prying eyes and ears. Prix Quais du Polar winner Antonin Varenne draws on his father's experiences of France's colonialist past to illuminate one of the darkest pages of France's colonial history, even as he details the grim reality of being a beat cop in present-day Paris. The result is a darkly personal, elegantly gritty tale of conspiracy, torture, corruption, and revenge.