AL06 - Murder in Montmartre

Praise for the Aimée Leduc series:

“The buzz . . . is partly about her heroine’s hip, next-generation, cutting-edge investigations and partly about Paris, a setting of unrivaled charm.”—Houston Chronicle

“If the cobblestones could talk, they might tell a tale as haunting as the one Cara Black spins.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Will have readers on pins and needles.”—San Francisco Chronicle

“One of the best new writers in the field today.”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“Conveys vividly those layers of history that make the stones of Paris sing for so many of us.”—Chicago Tribune

“With its sights, sounds, and colorful past, it’s a particularly eventful and involving Paris visit.”—Los Angeles Times

Spirited Aimée Leduc, a private investigator based in Paris, has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple by her partner, René, who urges her to learn to meditate as a counterbalance to her frenetic lifestyle. A Vietnamese nun asks her for a favor—to hand over a check and bring a package back to the temple. But this act of kindness ends in a stranger’s death and leaves her with a bullet wound in the arm, a check for 50,000 francs and a trove of ancient jade artifacts whose provenance is a mystery.

The French secret service, a group of veterans of the war in Indochina, some wealthy ex-colonials, and contending international oil companies all claim the jade. They will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. And the nun has disappeared.

Aimée has promised to avoid danger, but it continues to seek her out.

Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It's not her fault if she can't suppress her doubts about the relationship; René is moving way too fast, and Aimée's instincts tell her Meizi, this supposed love of René's life, isn't trustworthy. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway--with Meizi's photo in his wallet.

Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can't figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi's disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France's secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they're keeping tabs on Aimée. A missing young woman, an illegal immigrant raid in progress,...

When a mysterious visitor promises contact with her long-lost mother, Aimée Leduc finds herself hot on the trail of the Seventies radicals with whom her mother was evidently associated. The result is not just good suspense but an affecting and realistic psychological study of a daughter's coming to terms with an absent parent. This is another high-class mystery from Black, whose previous works in the series (, ) have the same indelible sense of place and sophisticated political context.

Tension runs high in this working-class neighborhood as a hunger strike to protest strict immigration laws escalates among the Algerian immigrants. Aimée barely escapes death in a car bombing in this tale of terrorism and greed in the shadows of Paris.

"Cara Black books are good companions, andespecially so. Fine characters, good suspense, but, best of all, they are transcendentally, seductively, irresistibly French. If you can't go, these will do fine. Or, better, go and bring them with you."--Alan Furst

"Charming. . . . Aimée is one of those blithe spirits who can walk you through the city's historical streets and byways with their eyes closed."--Marilyn Stasio,

"Paris is one of my favorite cities in all the world; Black's books are a fine way to revisit it."--

Praise for the Aimée Leduc series:

"One of the best heroines in crime fiction."--Lee Child

"The Parisienne Kinsey Millhone."--

"One of the best new writers in the field today."--(starred review)

"Haunting."--

Aimée is faced with a tight deadline on a computer security contract when a telephone call from a stranger leads her to an abandoned infant. She brings the baby to her home and names her Stella. She expects the mother to reclaim the child, but days pass as Aimée tries in vain to discover her identity. Her partner, René, urges her to turn the baby over to the authorities, but for Aimée this is too close to her own abandonment by her mother.

The search brings her among ecological protesters and oil company tycoons, newspapermen and would-be actresses, as demonstrators near her home on the Ile...

Paris Noir is a collection of new stories about the dark side of Paris, with contributions by leading French, British and American authors who have all either lived or spent a significant amount of time in Paris.

Edited by Maxim Jakubowski, the stories range from quietly menacing to spectacularly violent, and include contributions from some of the most famous crime writers from both sides of the Atlantic, as well as the other side of the Channel.

La tensión crece en el barrio obrero de Belleville cuando se intensifica una huelga de hambre en protesta contra las estrictas leyes de inmigración. Aimée Leduc se salva por los pelos de morir en un atentado con coche bomba mientras persigue a terroristas entre nacionalistas argelinos y fundamentalistas islámicos que conforman una red clandestina norteafricana en París. Desde que Simenon escribiese las novelas de Maigret, nadie había hecho unas novelas policíacas tan parisinas como las de Cara Black; pasear por las calles de Belleville de la mano de Aimée Leduc te transportará a los rincones más recónditos de la Ciudad de la Luz.

Al intentar salvar a una amiga de la niñez (ahora policía) de ser acusada de asesinato, Aimée se cruza en el camino de los personajes más curiosos de Montmartre: separatistas corsos radicales, gánsteres, los Servicios de Seguridad, prostitutas, descendientes de artistas y otros bohemios… Identificar al verdadero asesino acerca a Aimée a la resolución del misterio que rodea la muerte de su propio padre, unos años antes, en una explosión en la plaza Vendôme, una muerte que todavía acecha sus pensamientos. No descansará hasta que descubra quién fue el responsable.

Cara Black se ha forjado un renombre con las novelas que narran las aventuras de la detective Leduc, ambientadas en París. En sus páginas se puede disfrutar de La Ciudad de la Luz como si se paseara por sus calles. Es la serie de la que se habla en toda Europa.

Un misterioso rabino se acerca a Aimeé Leduc, detective parisina medio francesa y medio americana, y le pide que descifre una fotografía codificada de cincuenta años de antigüedad y se la haga llegar a una mujer en el Marais, el viejo barrio judío. Cuando lo hace, se encuentra con un cadáver en cuya frente alguien ha grabado una esvástica. Con la ayuda de su socio, un enano de extraordinarias habilidades informáticas, se decide a resolver este horrendo asesinato y se encuentra en el centro de un peligroso juego de política actual y viejos crímenes de guerra. Aimée recorre tejados y cloacas, los órganos del poder y los bajos fondos de París, para descubrir la historia de la ciudad que conforma su presente.

A new mystery series set in Paris introduces intrepid detective Aime Leduc.

It is November 1993 and the French prime ministerial candidate is about to sign a treaty with Germany that will severely restrict immigration, reminiscent of the Vichy laws. Aime Leduc is approached by a rabbi to decipher a fifty-year-old encrypted photograph and place it in the hands of Lili Stein. When she arrives at Lili's apartment in the Marais, the old Jewish quarter of Paris, she finds a corpse in whose forehead is carved a swastika. With the help of her partner, a dwarf with extraordinary computer hacking skills, Aime is determined to solve this horrendous crime. Then more murders follow. Her search for the killer leads her to a German war veteran involved in the 1940s with a Jewish girl he was supposed to send to her death. It takes Aime undercover inside a neo-Nazi group, where she must play a dangerous game of current politics and old war crimes. Many of the older Jews in the Marais are afraid and prefer to leave the past alone, but the horrible legacy of the death camps and the words "never forget" propel Aime to find out the true identities of the criminals past and present.