Murder in the Marais / Cara Black

Okay, so I wanted to find out more about Aimée Leduc, the Parisian gumshoe I was introduced to in Murder in Passy, which was the eleventh in the bestselling series. I rewound to the debut novel, Murder in the Marais. The plot is an interesting (but perhaps overly complicated) tangle of events centered on the Parisian Jewish community involving several murders, two in contemporary times, others dating to World War II. There are Nazi collaborators, a secret contemporary German organization called the Werewolves, French neonazis, corrupt politicians, and more.

I was a little bewildered by language issues— Cara Black liberally sprinkles her dialogue with French interjections, and it all seems a bit faux. French Neonazis spout German catchphrases in a meeting in Paris. I suppose this is possible, though I’m not sure why German would be the lingua franca of skinheads just because the Third Reich was German. (I would find it similarly remarkable that German would be used much in meetings of Idaho chapters of the radical right.) Sarah and Hartmuth, it was stated, could only communicate with gestures and rudimentary French, though later Thierry seems to communicate with his German father sans problème. Maybe he learned German in school, good Sturmführer-wannabe that he was. I don't recall reading that. Entertaining for what it is, I just don't think it's the same class of crime novel as Michael Dibdin or Henning Mankell, for example, but there are legions of fans, so if you like detective fiction, and like Paris, you may like Aimée Leduc. Allez-y!

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Murder in Passy, An Aimée Leduc Investigation / Cara Black

If you like your mysteries set in European locales, here’s a Parisian detective series that is sure to please. Aimée Leduc is a private eye, born of a French career detective and an absentee American mother (brief hints of angst over this in this installment). She’s appeared in about ten adventures, always set in iconic Parisian neighborhoods : Murder in the Marais, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in Montmartre, and Murder in the Latin Quarter , to name a few. In Murder in Passy (Paris’s tony XVIe arrondissement), Aimée finds herself mixed up in a murderous intrigue involving the French arm of the Basque nationalist movement. The final chase involves the kidnapping of a Spanish princess, a secret torture chamber used by the Gestapo in WWII, and a rooftop escape. The author sprinkles enough French words into the dialogue to either annoy you or make you feel your French 101 was not for nothing— Zut alors! très chic, c’est parfait, désolé, c’est tout! Oh, and Aimée’s frequent stop...

The Silent Patient / Alex Michaelides

A woman viciously murders her seemingly doting husband. We meet up with her several years later in a mental facility, where a therapist tries to get her to speak and to reveal her story. Who is innocent and who is the victim? The answer isn’t straightforward. The resolution to the novel features a real twist that will have the reader questioning the chronology of the different narrative threads in the book. A real page-turner.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

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