More noir atmosphere in the most unlikely places in the latest translation of Modiano

Another Patrick Modiano novel, this one from 1986, appears in English (Yale UP), translated as Sundays in August (I would prefer August Sundays), and of course it's completely of a piece w/ the many other Modiano novels, another noirish story in which the protagonist is confounded by mysterious happenings, pursued by a vaguely menacing assailant, hiding something from his past, unsure of his own memories, and touched w/ askance references to the Occupation. A major different however is that this novel is set not in Paris and its dingiest environs (though there are references to a previous period in the narrators life in one of the drab Paris suburbs) but in Nice - which is quite a trick as PM turns the sun=dappled Riviera setting with its grand hotels, casinos, and the promenades along beachfront into another version of urban noir. The plot, over the first half at least, concerns the narrator, Jean, who comes across a man (Villecourt) selling leather jackets from the back of a sketchy truck - the 2 apparently had quite a confrontation, seemingly about a woman named Sylvia, about 7 years previous. This encounter prompts Jean to recollect Sylvia: She came down from the aforesaid Paris suburb to meet in him Nice, wearing an expensive diamond (the Southern Cross). The 2 hide out for a time in a furnished room; eventually they are befriended by an elusive American couple. As Jean tries to learn more about this couple he determines that the live at the American consulate - but further inquiries show that the man in the couple had been the consul but some 25 years previously p until he was forced to resign regarding wartime profiteering and alliances w/ the German occupiers. So by the midpoint, we need to know: Who is or was this couple, if they were not an illusion of some sort? Where did Sylvia acquire the expensive diamond? What role did Villecourt plan in her life, and in Jean's? Why is Jean, in the "present," no longer w/ Sylvia, and what does V. want from Jean? Knowing Modiano, one can be sure that he will not close all the loops; these are whodunits that don't much concern who did what - they're about establishing a mood of mystery and an atmosphere of dread, sometimes in the most unlikely milieus.

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