by Cara Black
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Published: 2000
Publisher: Soho Press
Genre: Mystery, France, Paris
Hardback: 341
Rating: 4
Aimée Leduc Investigation series:
Murder in the Marais (1999)
Murder in Belleville (2000)
Murder in the Sentier (2003)
Murder in the Bastille (2004)
Murder in Clichy (2005)
Murder in Montmartre (2006)
Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (2007)
Murder in the Rue de Paradis (2008)
Murder in the Latin Quarter (2009)
Murder in the Palais Royale (2010)
Murder in Passy (2011)
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge (2012)
Murder Below Montparnasse (2013)
Murder In Pigalle (2014)
Murder on the Champ de Mars (2015)
Murder on the Quai (2016)
Murder in Saint-Germain (2017)
Muder on the Left Bank (2018)
Murder in Bel-Air (2019)
First sentence(s):
Aimée Leduc's cell phone rang, startling her, as she drove under the leafy poplars tenting the road to Paris.
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc finds herself involved with a secretive North African radical group the French government would rather she didn’t investigate
When Anaїs de Froissart calls private investigator Aimée begging for help, Aimée assumes her best friend's sister wants to hire her to do surveillance on her philandering husband again. Aimée's too busy right now to indulge her. But Anaїs, a politician's wife with an unhappy marriage and a young daughter, insists Aimée must come, that she is in trouble and scared. Aimée tracks Anaїs down just in time to see a car bomb explode, injuring Anaїs and killing the woman she was with.
Aimée, who saw her father die in a car bomb five years earlier, is shaken by the attack, but manages to escort Anaїs to safety. But Anaїs can't explain what Aimée just witnessed. The dead woman, Anaїs says, is Sylvie Coudray, her cheating husband's long-time mistress, but she has no idea who wanted her dead, and Anaїs officially hires Aimée to investigate.
As she digs into Sylvie Coudray's murky past, Aimée finds that the dead woman may not be who Anaїs thought she was. Her Belleville neighborhood, full of North African immigrants, may be hiding clues to who Sylvie really was. As a prominent Algerian rights activist stages a hunger protest against new immigration laws, Aimée begins to wonder whether Sylvie's death was an act of terrorism, and who else may be at risk. To make matters worse, Yves, Aimée's ex-boyfriend, a journalist who seems to appear in and disappear from Aimée's life without any regard for her feelings, is back in town. Just the kind of distraction she doesn't need right now.
My two-bits:
Got the North African immigrants vibe with investigations in and around the Belleville district for Paris.
Aimée's love life although precarious is moving forward.
Love how this mystery series highlights each arrondissement (districts) of Paris.
* part of Paris in July (here)
