Flic

by Valentin Gendrot

ISBN: 9781922585714

Published: 2023-07-04

What happens behind the walls of a police station? What kind of living does a cop make? And how does a culture of racism and violence become entrenched? Valentin Gendrot went undercover in Paris to find the answers - revelations that rocked France and led to a series of investigations, including an internal affairs case on Gendrot himself. Flic is an expose of a world never before seen by outsiders, an urgent story for our times, powerfully illustrated by the talented Thierry Chavant. 'What Gendrot depicts is a world of nihilistic cynicism. Stewing in racist invective and anti-bureaucratic rage at the mountains of paperwork they are buried under, Gendrot's fellow officers come across as frustrated and thwarted. They take that anger out on usually defenseless immigrants. While Gendrot depicts many potent scenes of vindictive violence - at one point, he witnesses cops pummeling a teenager with all the vicious senselessness of a scene out of A Clockwork Orange - he also digs into the...