Murder in Saint-Germain

Review by New York Times Review

HONOR-BASED VIOLENCE - which covers everything from beatings and kidnapping to mutilation and murder - is a scourge in Britain, where the Crown Prosecution Service estimates that the 12 or so honor killings reported each year are only a fraction of the true number committed in Muslim, Sikh and Hindu communities. In LOVE LIKE BLOOD (Atlantic Monthly, $26), Mark Billingham puts human faces on one such case, telling the story of Amaya and Kamai, two Bangladeshi teenagers who run away together to avoid arranged marriages. They make it as far as the London Underground, and the rest is pure savagery. "There isn't an ounce of anything like nobility in what these people do," Detective Inspector Nicola Tanner hotly informs her colleague Tom Thorne. "It's murder, pure and simple, pretending to be something else." Although "dishonored" male relatives are prime suspects in most cases of punitive violence, squeamish families often prefer to shop the job to a middleman with access to professional hit men - thugs like Muldoon and Riaz, who collaborate efficiently but whose cultural clashes can be morbidly funny. (Riaz enjoys Bollywood movies, while Muldoon is amused by these musical fantasies about forlorn lovers. "In a film or whatever, you get to sing about it," he observes, "but in real life you get the likes of us turning up.") Billingham allows his plot to wander down some pretty dark alleys. A friend of Amaya's is gang-raped, considered appropriate retribution for talking to the police. And it's disconcerting to learn that in Pakistan some honor killings can be forgiven by the victim's family, with no punishment for the murderers. But Billingham saves his real animus for the Metropolitan Police's Honor Crimes Unit, which receives 3,000 incident reports a year but doesn't have a website - or even a sign on the door. "There's a Royal Protection Unit and a Marine Unit and a big, hairy Dog Support Unit," Thorne notes, but nothing about an Honor Crimes Unit. "It's as if it doesn't officially exist." Which is what the victims assumed all along. DETECTIVE MANON BRADSHAW was endearingly klutzy in last year's "Missing, Presumed," by Susie Steiner. Since she's five months pregnant in persons unknown (Random House, $27), she's even more ungainly, but still endearing, in a novel that's nominally a mystery but is actually a smart and funny rumination on motherhood. Manon has returned to Cambridgeshire with her adopted 12-year-old son, Fly, to protect him from the indignities of growing up black in London. The irony is that the boy becomes a major suspect in the murder of a London banker who turns out to be the ex-husband of Manon's sister, Ellie, and the father of her 3-year-old son. Although the plot - involving the sleaze merchants of an international prostitution ring - is a mess, the racial theme cuts deep enough to hurt, and the characters are distinctive. Secondary players like Detective Sergeant Davy Walker, who lives to help others, and Birdie Fielding, a prize specimen of the Beatles' lonely people, are sweethearts. But since Steiner seems to judge all her characters on the strength of their mothering instincts, the Latvian gangsters don't get any love. MARGARET maron is one of those authors whose devoted fans would follow them anywhere. Now that she has retired her wonderful Deborah Knott series set in North Carolina, readers must head for New York City, the setting of TAKE OUT (Grand Central, $27), the final mystery in another series, which features Sigrid Harald. Lieutenant Harald's policing may seem old-fashioned, but that's because the novel's action takes place in the 1990s. When two homeless men are found dead on a bench, the detective learns they were poisoned by some takeout food. But this part of Greenwich Village is very neighborly and the locals, who include the widow of a mafia don and a former opera star, were always bringing them home-cooked meals. Which one was meant to die? And who delivered the lethal lasagna? Sigrid has a coolly analytic mind; it's sad to think we're watching her puzzle out her last case. aside from mounting surveillance with a nanny cam, will having an 8-month-old bébe cramp Aimée Leduc's ineffable style? The modish heroine of MURDER IN SAINT-GERMAIN (Soho Crime, $27.95) and other delicious Parisian mysteries by Cara Black must juggle motherhood with finding a nasty blackmailer, overseeing computer security at the École des Beaux-Arts and hunting down a Serbian warlord. This is Black's 17th Leduc novel, each set in a different neighborhood, and the formula still charms. Although the business of the warlord is a lot more interesting than Aimée's bread-and-butter cyber security jobs, finding a babysitter in July and August, when "toute Paris had disappeared," is even more challenging. The criminal elements of the story aren't taxing, but the abiding pleasure of this series is the chance to ride with a cabdriver who wants to discuss Sartre or just tearing around Paris on Aimée's pink Vespa, making stops at the Jardín du Luxembourg and the île Saint-Louis, where Aimée has an apartment. Lucky girl. ? Marilyn STASIO has covered crime fiction for the Book Review since 1988. Her column appears twice a month.

Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [August 30, 2019]

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Review by Booklist Review

It will come as no surprise to readers of Black's Aimée Leduc series to learn that the Parisian PI is in way over her head this time. Her straightforward computer-security job at an art school just got complicated by the blackmailing of one of the professors; Aimée's friend Suzanne, of the Brigade Criminelle, has spotted a Serbian war criminal who was supposed to be dead and now she needs Aimée's help to track him down. And that's just the work stuff. There's also the matter of Beloit, Aimée's new boyfriend/babysitter, and the reappearance of her old beau, also the father of Aimée's child, Chloe. And let's not forget Aimée's godfather, Morbier, in the hospital and near death, asking to speak with his estranged goddaugher. Oh, and Aimée's pink scooter has been behaving poorly, making it all the harder to crash around town at the usual breakneck pace. It's a familiar setup, of course, but this is one series whose primary appeal is its absolute predictability. Keep crashing, Aimée, just like you always have. The view of Paris from the back of your scooter couldn't be better.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2017 Booklist

From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.

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Review by Publisher's Weekly Review

Set in the sizzling summer of 1999, Black's twisty 17th Aimée Leduc investigation (after 2016's Murder on the Quai) finds the Parisian PI doing a job for the École des Beaux-Arts, the kind of computer security work that pays the bills for her agency, Leduc Detective. Then old acquaintance and counterterrorism operative Suzanne Lesage asks Aimée to find a Serbian warlord, who was presumed dead but who, Suzanne insists, is alive and following her. This case presents the kind of danger that Aimée hoped she left behind with the birth of her daughter, Chloé, eight months before, but she agrees to help. Meanwhile, she's wracked with guilt after a shooter seriously wounds her godfather, Morbier, and she doesn't completely trust Chloé's biological father, Malec, who has turned up, seeking to spend time with the baby. Black juggles numerous plot lines with panache and brings to life the charm and grit of Paris. A few nods to old-fashioned capers (Aimée keeps a whole wardrobe of disguises) enhance a mystery as sharp as Aimée's designer stiletto heels. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown. (June) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved

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Review by Library Journal Review

In her 17th outing, Parisian PI detective -Aimée Leduc has two cases: a secretive job for a professor, and a dangerous investigation into the reappearance of a war criminal who should be dead. Could his return be linked to the murders of members of an elite counter-terrorism squad? At the same time, Leduc juggles caring for her baby between jobs. [See Prepub Alert, 1/4/17.]-LH © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

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Review by Kirkus Book Review

A job at the cole des Beaux-Arts and a search for a Serbian lowlife combine to lead Aime Leduc (Murder on the Quai, 2016, etc.) through the upscale part of Paris' Left Bank.With Leduc Detectives in a temporary office in the former 17th-century cloister now housing the famed art school, it seems natural enough for directrice Sybille to hire Aime to investigate a case involving one of its professors even though Jules Dechard won't tell Aime what the case is about. All he'll divulge is that he wants a list of all email sent to and from a particular address. Since her partner, Ren Friant, is a computer whiz, email snooping is child's play for Aime. So she has enough time to also help her old friend Suzanne Lesage, a former member of an elite counterterrorism squad. Suzanne's convinced she's seen Mirko Vladi?, a sadistic murderer blown up in Serbia, alive and well in Paris. The tabac where Suzanne spotted Mirko is right behind the Saint-Sulpice Mtro stop, so Aime can check it out easily on her way from the office. But none of the Balkan migrs who frequent the shop has seen Mirko. A lull in both her cases doesn't mean a respite for Aime, though. Like a bad centime, Melac, the father of her baby, is back, and Aime can't decide whether all the free babyproofing in the world is worth the heartache Chlo's sexy, married dad may bring. Black's detective is hitting her post-pregnancy stride, bringing up bb while battling the bad guys with the best of them. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

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Paris, Jardin du Luxembourg · July 1999 Tuesday, Early Morning   The beekeeper rolled up his goatskin gloves, worried that the previous day's thunderstorm, which had closed the Jardin du Luxembourg, had disturbed his sweet bees. He needed to prepare them for pollinating the garden's apple trees, acacias, and chestnuts that week. Under the birdsong he could already make out the low buzz coming from the gazebo that sheltered their wooden hives. As he approached, he passed gardeners piling scattered plane-tree branches, their boots sucking in the mud.      What a mess. On top of the cleanup, he had a beekeeping class to teach here this afternoon. The buzzing mounted--had a hive been knocked over in the wind? As he adjusted his netted headgear, he felt a lump, something squishing under his boot.      Pale, mud-splattered fingers--a hand. Good God, he'd stepped on a human hand protruding from the hedge surrounding the apiary. Horrified, he stepped back, pushed the dripping branches of the bushes aside. He gasped to see a woman sprawled in a sundress. One hand clutched her swollen throat; buzzing bees, like black-gold jewels, covered most of her body.      Even before he shouted to the gardeners for help, he knew it was too late.   Paris · Tuesday Morning Aimée Leduc's bare legs wrapped around Benoît's spine as his tongue traced her ear. His warm skin and musk scent enveloped her. Delicious. Early morning sunlight pooled on her herringbone wood floor.      She didn't want him to stop. A sniffling cry came over the baby monitor. Non. The cry grew louder.       "Yours or mine?" Benoît sighed.      She'd know her daughter Chloé's cry anywhere; these were the cries of Benoît's niece, Gabrielle. "Yours."      One of the phones on the floor beeped. He looked at her again.       "Mine," said Aimée.      Benoît nuzzled her neck, disentangled himself, and found his shirt. She reached from where she lay on the duvet to the pile of clothes on the floor and found her cell phone.      A voice mail. Unknown number. She dialed in, heard the tone, and waited. "It's Dr. Vesoul." A clearing of the throat. "Our patient, Commissaire Morbier, went into emergency surgery. We're calling the family. He was asking for you."      Aimée's heart scudded. A knifelike pain wrenched her gut. Morbier. Her godfather . . . the man responsible for her father's murder.      The man she'd gotten shot two months earlier.      The man who had taken her to ballet lessons when she was a child. The man who'd lied to her for years.      Go hear him lie again? Never, she told herself. Kept telling herself that as she slipped into the work outfit hanging in her armoire--a black pencil skirt and white silk blouse--and as her shaking fingers struggled with the straps of her Roger Vivier sandals.     Bronze sunlight stippled the worn tiles on the kitchen floor. Miles Davis, Aimée's bichon frise, licked the spilled milk under Gabrielle's high chair. Holding her bébé , Chloé, on her hip, Aimée handed Benoît a freshly brewed espresso. He responded with a long kiss on her neck.       She would have liked that to go on forever. His scent lingered in her hair. "Tonight?" she asked.       "I've got meetings."      Benoît, a Sorbonne professor, tall and dark haired, lived across the courtyard at his sister and brother-in-law's. Stretching a long weekend, they'd asked him to babysit. His niece, Gabrielle, shared a caregiver, Babette, with Chloé. The babies were only a month apart in age.       "Playing hard to get?" she whispered. Stupid. Why couldn't she set boundaries, as the ELLE relationship article counseled? Keep him wanting more, not pull Gabrielle's uncle into her bed every night.       "Look for me around eleven," he breathed in her ear. His hand slipped into her blouse and traced the edge of her lace bra. "I'll bring the champagne; you provide the chaos. And wear that."      He waved goodbye to Gabrielle, seated in her high chair, and greeted the arriving Babette, who chattered about her upcoming Greek vacation. Aimée sat eight-month-old Chloé in the high chair next to Gabrielle's--like two peas in a pod; she never got over that. Chloé mashed a raspberry in her pudgy fingers, then smeared it on the stuffed bunny Morbier had given her at her christening.      For a moment, Morbier's face flashed in Aimée's head. She wanted to throw the bunny in the trash. But as she eased it from Chloé's sticky hand, the baby emitted a little cry. "Désolée, ma puce." Aimée tossed the favorite bunny into the hamper.      She could do this, couldn't she? Pull off being a working maman. She'd scored with a sweet caregiver for Chloé and a hunk who lived just across the courtyard.      She flipped open her red Moleskine to her to-do list, half listening to Babette's vacation chatter. A handwritten phone number glared up at her. Morbier's handwriting. Her insides trembled. Her godfather's presence was everywhere in her life. She pictured herself at his deathbed, imagined his accusations. Felt a beat of pain and drew a deep breath.      One thing at a time. Compartmentalize. Her goal these days was to put things into mental boxes, deal with the nonpriorities later. Hopefully, by the time she got to the most unpleasant item, it would have gone away.      She picked up Chloé and inhaled her sweet baby smell.       "Give maman a bisou ," said Babette, folding diapers by the window and puckering her lips.      Chloé cooperated with a raspberry-scented slobber. Her daughter's grey-blue eyes were so like those of Melac, the girl's biological father, and reminded Aimée of him every day. Melac had a new wife, and he and Aimée had a custody truce--life was good, wasn't it?      For a moment, in her sunlit kitchen, with the Seine gurgling below the window, Babette's bustling faded away. All Aimée wanted to do on this muggy July day was sit back down and play with her rosy-cheeked Chloé. Forget about the day ahead . . . and Morbier.      Her phone rang in the hallway.       "See you tonight, ma puce. " She blew a kiss.      At the coatrack she grabbed her trench coat, found her phone in her bag, and hit answer.       " Allô , Aimée? It's Jojo Dejouy. Got a moment?"      An old commissaire who'd been a colleague of her father's--and Morbier's. Not now of all times.       " Oui , can I call you later? I'm off to work . . ." She held the phone against her ear as she hurried down the marble stairs, grooved with age, to the ground floor.       "Morbier's asking for you, Aimée. I thought you should know."      First the doctor and now Jojo. She wanted to yell, Leave me alone!       "Not a good time, Jojo. Désolée. " She shooed a stray black cat out of Chloé's stroller, parked next to Gabrielle's by the stairs. Brushed off the cat hairs.      There was silence on Jojo's end of the line. Aimée stepped over the courtyard's puddles. She held the phone between her shoulder and ear, dumping her bag in her motor scooter's basket.       "I know how you feel about Morbier," he said finally.      Like hell he did. She checked the spark plug. Kicked the tires. Good enough.       "There's not much time," said Jojo. "If you don't hear him out, I think you'll be saddled with more guilt than you feel already."      Guilt? "That's not the word I'd use, Jojo."       "It's for your sake that I called, not his," said Jojo. "It's you who's got to live with the consequences. Like I do. Never leave things unsaid, Aimée. Come to terms with Morbier."       "Alors . . ." Her heel skidded on a fallen pear from the courtyard tree. Crushed on the cobbles, the fruit emitted a sweet scent.       "Wait, Aimée." Jojo's voice rose. "Your father meant a lot to me. I didn't show it when they kicked him off the force. That was wrong. To my last day, I'll regret that. But I know you're a bigger person than I am. You find the good in people. You're generous, like your father."      Aimée wiped her heeled sandal on a cobble. "Got to go, Jojo."       "You're afraid of his accusations?"       "I've as good as killed him."       "The CRS shot him, not you. Morbier's an old dog," said Jojo, "been around long enough to know the score."      She hung up. Grabbed the handlebars of her faded pink Vespa so hard her knuckles hurt. Couldn't she put the past aside for once and get on with today?      Yet she'd known Morbier all her life. She wondered what her father would have done.      A mist filled the quai, the plane-tree leaves rustled, and a siren whined as she gunned over Pont de la Tournelle to the Left Bank.      Find the good in people? Generous? She didn't feel generous.      But maybe she did want to hear whatever Morbier had to tell her. Could she face Morbier? Or would she end up kicking herself later? Would she regret it even more if she didn't hear him out?      At the traffic light beyond the quai, she turned left instead of right, heading toward la Maison de Santé du Gardien de la Paix, the pale brick police hospital that bordered the Latin Quarter. Of those who went in, half made it to the country rehab clinic; the rest came out in a box.      The gathering clouds promised more rain after yesterday's storm. The humid heat was like a blanket lying over the streets. What she wouldn't give for a whiff of breeze. Her damp collar stuck to her neck, her fingers trembled, and she almost turned around.      Perspiration dried in the cleft of her neck. She'd come this far. Determined, she hurried up the hospital stairs. A few minutes, that would be all. She'd hear what Morbier wanted to tell her, then go.      Cool antiseptic-laced air met her in the old-fashioned wood-paneled lobby. Near the reception desk, she caught sight of Jeanne, Morbier's middle-aged girlfriend. Jeanne leaned against the wall, her hands covering her face. Too late?      The disinfectant odors couldn't block the smell of two old men on Aimée's left, each standing with the support of a walker. "Good job. Take another step. We're almost there," said a perspiring young nurse. Aimée recognized one of the men--Philippe, from her father's old commissariat . A haggard face now, one side of him drooping, drool hanging from his chin.      Sobs came from another corridor. Aimée shuddered and stepped back. Her fault, all her fault.      Jeanne saw her and beckoned.      That cold, wet night came back to her--Morbier reaching for what she thought was his gun, her signaling the SWAT team, the shots, the blood, all that blood, Morbier wheeled into emergency surgery.      Guilt, sadness, and anger washed over her.      Aimée couldn't push that scuffed door open. Couldn't  face his dying. She shook her head at Jeanne, felt a tear course down her cheek, and turned around.       "Aimée, come back," yelled Jeanne.      A minute later, she'd jumped on her scooter and taken off. Excerpted from Murder in Saint-Germain by Cara Black All rights reserved by the original copyright owners. Excerpts are provided for display purposes only and may not be reproduced, reprinted or distributed without the written permission of the publisher.

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