A painter accidentally knocks down a mysterious woman carrying a violin along a desolate road in Spain; when she awakens with amnesia, they form an unhealthy attachment in Frederic Dard's The Executioner Weeps.
The artist becomes obsessed with the young woman, and doggedly ignores signs that maybe all was not well in her previous life; a quick trip back to France to check on clues reveals a tragic truth that leads to a downbeat ending.
Dard was a highly prolific author of French noir, and this entry was an award winner when it came out in the late 1950s. This is a recent translation by the imprint Pushkin Vertigo.
The French noir novels I have sampled overall have a tendency to be short, very dark, and unpleasant, and I would say this first dip into Dard's work fits the criteria.
That being said, I enjoy Dard's writing quite a bit and would look for more of his lengthy bibliography.
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