Powerful and compelling’ Guardian’Mathieu, a wonderful writer, echoes the grittiness and compassion of mile Zola in Germinal’ Sunday Times After the closure of a small-town factory is announced, the local community is hit by the prospect of mass unemployment. With nothing left to lose, the desperate workers take matters into their own hands. Martel, a former trade union rep, and Bruce, a bodybuilder on steroids, resort to extreme measures. And after an attempted kidnapping goes horribly wrong, they are dragged into a spiraling frenzy of crime. In the political tradition of Balzac and Zola, Of Fangs and Talons announces Nicolas Mathieu as one of the most urgent contemporary voices in French literature.’Nicolas Mathieu has written one of the best crime novels of the year’Le Monde