From the moment he first gazes at Marjory across the roulette table in the Côte d'Azur Jean-Marie is entranced, and when their feverish holiday romance comes to an end he decides to take the biggest gamble of his life - to follow the beautiful Englishwoman back to rainy Edinburgh. But no sooner has Jean-Marie arrived than his luck runs out. He is drawn into an impenetrable mystery and soon, with blood on his hands, trapped in the grey-granite labyrinth of the city, he is running out of time to save his sanity and his life. The King of Fools is a fiendish tale of passion, betrayal and murder.

"The French master of noir" - The Observer

"Alongside the Maigret novels of Georges Simenon there is a rich vein of period French crime still to be tapped. Frédéric Dard is a case in point" - Daily Mail

"At heart, The King of Fools is another Dard Noir Romance, a book about a love story gone bad, which is charming and engaging far beyond the plot details" - International Crime Fiction

"Sure to appeal to fans of Agatha Christie, Raymond Chandler and Georges Simenon... A slim novel with laconic prose and a stunning plot, The King of Fools will keep many a mystery lover up too late - and waiting eagerly for the next novel of Dard's to be translated into English" - Shelf Awareness

"The literary descendant of Simenon and Celine" - Le Figaro

"No question: for me, he was the greatest" - Philippe Geluck

"France's most popular post-war author" - L'Express

"His language is cutting, his point-of-view original and his verdict uncompromising... One of the few twentieth-century authors to win both critical acclaim and great popularity" - Solidarité Militaire