With the title "The Marseille Trilogy," the novels of Jean-Claude Izzo, "The Black Song of Marseille," "The Gang," "Solea," are reissued in one volume, featuring the character Fabio Montale. This sensitive police officer, descendant of immigrants, enemy of violence, who loves poetry, jazz, fishing, women, and his city, Marseille: a city at the crossroads of peoples and cultures, the great port of France.

Marseille, with its port and its people, its streets and its girls, where French racists, corrupt police officers, and fanatic Islamists intersect, while the shadow of the Mafia spreads everywhere, is the ideal setting for noir stories.

And the hero, full of doubts about himself, always determined to reach the end, continues his wandering in the streets of lost innocence. Struggling between nostalgia and rebellion, he acts for the sake of companionship and friendship with everlasting humanity.

Izzo, a child of "illegal immigration" himself, like Zidane, has given his city something that the city now repays with love and gratitude: a new image, a new life. A myth. "I envy Marseille. I would love to one day find Fonfon's bar - may he rest in peace - and shout to him: 'Patron, un pastis!' In memory of Izzo."

(from the epilogue by Richard Someritis)