“I was desperate to write a novel, but I didn’t have a story. Whenever I tried to write fiction it was all about my own inner bullshit.”

“I think it’s possible that I am a better person now than the person who wrote this novel was.”

  Ivory Pearl is the lion’s share of a book that, sadly, Jean-Patrick Manchette—polymath, chess whiz, jazz superenthusiast, comic-book lover, literary genius—didn’t live to finish. Like Boris Vian, who also died young, Manchette was im…