This was an unfinished and undated manuscript, never published during Queneau's lifetime: a complicated crime story obviously inspired by the famous Fantômas series (1911-1963), but with bizarre elements that are straight out of Queneau's surreal imagination, like the seventeen giant octopuses, one of which descends from the top of the Eiffel Tower to squash a traffic policeman, or the man in an orangutang suit in a carnival parade who turns out to be an actual orangutang. Or the car chase in which the chasing car and its occupants turn out to be identical to those being chased. All very strange, and of course it's impossible to know which of the many inconsistencies in the plot are deliberate and which are due to the unfinished state of the story. But fun, in a bizarre way. ( )