Return flight

n the first chapter of this novel a hitman remarks to himself: “No one realises how much hit men owe to Hollywood scriptwriters.” But how does the author know? The throwaway joke, along with an unashamed obsession with verbally recreating and namechecking the mise -en- scène of streaming TV drama, is typical of the book’s effervescent playfulness. Hervé Le Tellier, after all, is president of Oulipo, the French “workshop of potential literature” whose past masters included Raymond