It has often been observed that the topography of the polar reflects the social and political concerns of its day. Since the world of the polar is also a fundamentally urban one (Reuter 66), it is not surprising that the banlieues occupy a prominent position in many recent works. Although most literary and cinematic works dealing with the banlieues are set in Paris, a significant number of works depicting the quartiers nord of Marseilles have appeared in recent years. As Mireille Rosello has observed, many of these works portray a multiracial, multiethnic Marseilles whose hybrid origins are inscribed in the foundational myth of the city. In this paper, I propose to examine the ways in which the conventions of the polar are used to addresses issues related to the quartiers nord in the work of Jean-Paul Delfino, Jean-Claude Izzo, Philippe Carrese, and Daniel Saint-Hamont. After a short discussion of banlieue-related crime as a theme in the media and in novels by authors of immigrant descent, the first part of the paper will focus on the sympathetic portrayal of the quartiers nord and on the presentation of those who threaten the multicultural identity of Marseiles as the true criminals in the polars. In particular, it will demonstrate how the depiction of a battle over the future of the city opposing two fundamentally different visions that of a pluralist Marseilles, in which the banlieues have an important role to play, and that of a right-wing anti-immigrant regime serves to encourage the reader not to look at the banlieues through the distorted prism of cliches and media reports. The second part of the paper will examine what appears to be an emerging shift towards a consideration of the banlieues in a more global arena. In Chourmo, for example, Izzo uses a subplot involving militant Islamism in order to explore the question whether the quartiers nord could become a breeding ground for soldiers of God, while Saint-Hamont s Le jour de l AVd, a post-September 11 banlieue text, makes the quartiers nord the center of an international terrorist plot.