Jean-Patrick Manchette (1942-1995) was a crime novelist, screenwriter, critic, and translator. In 1971 he published his first novel and went on to establish a new genre of French novel, the neo-polar. NYRB Classics publishes his Fatale, The Mad and the Bad, and Ivory Pearl.

Donald Nicholson-Smith has translated Manchette's Fatale, The Mad and the Bad, and Ivory Pearl, as well as Jean-Paul Clebert's Paris Vagabond for NYRB Classics, and Yvan Alagbe's Yellow Negroes and Other Imaginary Creatures and Nicole Claveloux's The Green Hand and Other Stories for NYR Comics. He lives in New York City.
Lucy Sante is the author of Low Life, Evidence, The Factory of Facts, Kill All Your Darlings, Folk Photography, and most recently, The Other Paris. She translated Félix Fénéon's Novels in Three Lines and has written introductions to several other NYRB Classics, including Classic Crimes by William Roug­head and Pedigree by Georges Simenon. A frequent contributor to The New York Review of Books, she teaches writing and the history of photography at Bard College.