‘Murder in the Bastille’ by Cara Black

Published by Soho Press,
1 July 2003.
ISBN: 978-1-56947-324-5 (HB)

On  pleasant October evening in Paris, Aimée Leduc is endeavouring to calm her angry client Vincent Csarda, who is not a happy man having discovered that his advertising agency Populax is running a campagne for a client who is a front for a money laundering operation for gun runners. Vincent is taking it out on Luduc Detective who are is security consultants. Aimée’s eveinh is going from bad to worse. Not only can she not convince Vimcent to hand over his hard disc to the authorities before they subpoena him, but the woman at the next table is wearing the same black silk Chinese jacket as Aimée. The one that the boutique assured Aimée was a one-off.  After Vincent has flounced off, Aimée sees that the woman has left her mobile phone, before she can hand it to the restaurant, it rings. She answers it automatically. ‘Meet me in Passage de :a Boule Blanche’ says a voice and disconnects. The simplest thing is to take the phone to the woman’s friend , as it is close by.

The attack is both sudden and devastating, when she next awakes, she is in hospital. In this book Aimée is faced not only with a mystery to solve but with a personal challenge, as the attack has left her with a disability which may or may not be permanent. The police put the attack down to a serial killer, Vadus, who was released from custody on a legal technicality just the day before Aimée’s attack, but she is not convinced. With the help of her business partner René Friant she sets out to find the woman for whom she thinks she was mistaken, but then a further attack is made on her and she is not sure if she was the intended victim or the unknown woman.

Told from multiple points of view in this book, René, the computer expert takes an active role in the direction which poses problems for a normally desk-bound detective, and particularly as René is short being just 4 ft. We learn some of the problems being height challenged.  We also meet again Sergeant Loic Bellan, who was Aimée’s father’s protégé who is facing his own demons when his wife gives birth to his son who is diagnosed with Down’s Syndrome.

As in previous books Cara Black captures the essence that is so Paris. I was back there again, where I had lived for a short six months, but which ensnared me for ever.

An excellent mystery, exploring personal challenges that make one think of the things that many of us take for granted. Highly recommended.
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Reviewer: Lizzie Hayes

Cara Black was born in Chicago but has lived in California’s Bay Area since she was five years old. Before turning to writing full-time, she tried her hand at a number of jobs: she was a barista in the Basel train station café in Switzerland, taught English in Japan, studied Buddhism in Dharamsala in Northern India. She is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of twenty books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, which is set in Paris. There are now twenty one books in the series. Her latest book is Night Flight to Paris, second in her new series featuring Kate Rees, and set in 1942.

https://carablack.com