Book Review: Murder in the Rue de Paradis (2008)

Each Wednesday, I review a French-related book. The subject varies, from culture to film to memoir to biography to whatever the heck I feel like reading that week and whatever strikes my fancy at the library or bookshop.

I haven’t read a mystery in years and years. Not since my last Mary Higgins Clark, probably sometime in graduate school or even my years in Japan. It’s not that I didn’t like Higgins Clark, it’s just that I go through periods when I tire of certain genres, just as I tired of chick-lits and horrors (I read Peter Straub and John Saul for years) and romance novels (my collection numbered in the 3-figures at one point). Heck, for a time in college I even got stuck on Danielle Steel. Yes, I suppose that was a low point, but hey, she’s a bazillionaire bestselling author for a reason.

My favorite mystery character of all time, however, dates back to my pig-tail days. (If I’d worn pigtails back then. To my mother’s dismay, I inherited her thick, unruly hair, which never agreed to pigtails. But I digress.) Trixie Belden rocked, I read all of Nancy Drew’s classic stories, and I spent the better part of my youth imitating Harriet the Spy’s “investigative tactics,” right down to the ever-present notebook, thick eyeglasses and “spy kit.” (Mine consisted of my Mickey Mouse lunchbox stuffed with a dark green polyester mini-skirt, a magnifying glass I picked up at a 5&10, and a few pens. A girl-spy can never be too prepared.)

But the girl who captured my heart completely was — and always will be — Donna Parker. Anytime I see one of those brightly painted cardboard covers at yard sales or Salvation Army book collections, I snatch it immediately. Remember good ol’ Donna? She never had to face the kind of death-defying mysteries that Nancy or even Trixie confronted, but she had her share of adventures. Pretty, sweet and good-hearted, she nevertheless had killer nerves and lots of courage — hot stuff for a girl like me, growing up in a single-mom household in the poor part of town. As Jessica Zafra recently wrote in her book Tw7sted, We can never be truly safe; we can only be brave. Donna Parker took that to heart and was among the bravest girl heroines.

I thought of her as I read through Cara Black‘s latest Aimee Leduc mystery, Murder in the Rue de Paradis. The stylish, hip, and I-eat-nails-for-breakfast Aimee is basically Donna Parker all grown up — self-assured, witty, smart and a smart ass, a risk-taker (sometimes a reckless one), but with that streak of vulnerability that’s both endearing and endlessly frustrating. Yeah, that’s my girl.

This is the first and only Aimee Leduc mystery I’ve read (I think there may have been 8 or 9 previous ones), but you can bet I’ll be checking out more at my local public library. In a word: Awesome. The character’s the best mystery protagonist I’ve read since my childhood days breathlessly following little Donna’s adventures, and Cara Black’s heartstopping chapters compel you to turn page after page after page after page after page…sigh. Yeah. It’s arresting.

Twentysomething Aimee Leduc — half French, half American, all Parisian — is a private detective running a computer security firm out of a rundown but classic office in the heart of the city. Her partner is Rene Friant, a nattily dressed dwarf with a brain for computers and a body for black belt judo. He’s also her best friend, and he’s eager to move out of their cramped little space and finally achieve the Great French Dream, i.e., owning a little corner of Paris so that they can “stop paying the landlord’s mortgage.”

When first we meet our brave heroine, Aimee has just gotten engaged to her on-again, off-again lover, Yves Robert, an investigative journalist with the Agence France Press. Now, before the mystery-lovers among you get all excited, yes, Yves does get bumped off within the first chapter. And no, I don’t consider that a spoiler because you find it out anyway by reading the quick blurb on the dust jacket.

[Insert ominous music here] Who killed Yves? What was he doing on the rue de Paradis in the middle of the night, when he should have been in bed cuddling with his newly betrothed? Why did he suddenly return to Paris, when he was supposed to have been in Cairo? Or is it Ankara? Why is the Brigade Criminelle accepting the far-too-easy conclusion that their suspect in custody — a male prostitute and junkie — is the logical murderer? And how the hell does Aimee manage to afford all those designer duds she wears?

More intriguing questions unfold with every thick page, and I promise you — like good ol’ Molly Brown, you won’t be able to put this baby down. San Francisco resident Black — who spends a good deal of time in Paris every year, mostly to research the Leduc books — obviously knows the city well. The action caroms throughout the city, sending Aimee from one arondissement to another as she follows the tenuous thread that began with Yves’ murder in the hopes that it will lead her to the killer. In the meantime, she gets involved in the attempted assassination of the first Kurdish Muslim to be elected to the Turkish parliament — and a woman at that — the shadowy underworld of male prostitution, the Kurdish movement in Turkey, the secretive world of mosques scattered across the Parisian landscape, and even the hair-pulling world of Parisian real estate. Throw in Iranian Shi’as, a few bombings, even a reference to the 1993 World Trade Center bombings, and you’ve got yourself a twisted, sometimes confusing network of suspects, clues, dead-ends, half-baked theories, and suspicious figures populating a very rich, multi-layered story.

And through it all, Aimee Leduc strides confidently through the mess, scarf around her shoulder, secondhand Kelly bag in her hand (with her trusty Beretta in it, natch) and Chanel Red lipstick swiped across her mouth. Damn.

I’ll admit, this isn’t one of those mysteries that you can sleep-read. As involved as it is, you’ll need to pay close attention to the dialogue, what people say, think, how they say it, who they know, and hell, what you know about terrorist cells and Islam and all the creepy-crawlies that now figure so prominently on the nightly news. This isn’t an al-Qaeda story — Osama bin Laden’s group doesn’t merit a mention here — but it reminds the reader of the new world in which we live, where our enemies hide in plain sight among us, living, breathing, eating, and sleeping within our cities and towns and hotels and even houses. Where secrets hide behind the most innocent smiles, and no one can truly be trusted, not even your best friend.

If you only read one mystery novel this year, let this be the one. Black knows how to pace her story, how to hold the cards close to her chest, how to cast shadows across pages so that one never really knows where things are. Movements are rapid-fire, and while the events in the entire book take place over the course of a few days, it can seem like centuries, with all that happens from the time Aimee first steps into view to the moment she wearily walks off the last page. And with a little twist thrown in regarding the search for her missing mother — the darkest, most tempting shadow of them all — one can never be too sure that there isn’t more to the story, that even after we think that all loose ends have been tied up, there may still remain one last, hanging thread.

Shiver. Get this book. Grab a glass of wine, park yourself in a comfy chair, and plan to stay there for a few nail-biting hours. It’ll be worth your while.

Note: I understand that Black is in the middle of her book tour right now, and from the looks of her schedule, the woman is everywhere. If you can, catch her at one of her book signings. I love supporting authors during their book tours — they need all the support we can give them, especially those published by small presses that don’t have the massive budgets of the Random Houses and Alfred Knopfs out there. Also, check out Black’s blog here.

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