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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
66 of 70 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Some room to improve...,
By
This review is from: Murder in the Marais (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 1) (Paperback)
"Murder in the Marais" is a good beginning novel. It's descriptive, often intriguing in the construction of the Paris setting and characters. The plot has its moments, and the reader gets caught up in some very intriguing puzzles which inter-weave history, religion, and human passion. But Cara Black has some fine tuning to do before she can become a truely good author. First, simplify a little. There are too many puzzles which are irrelevant, and details which don't add much to the progression of the story--fashionable coats, torn photographs, footprints leading nowhere. There are a clutter of characters, too: many of them enter and exit without making much impression or contribution to the story. And finally, there's the heroine, Aimee. She's truely a superwoman: she can leap buildings, kick the heck out of some pretty strong men, and inspire some wolf whistles even after emerging from a garbage canister. She's good in bed, and great with computers. She carries her assistant, the dwarf, around like he's a rag doll, and she saves Paris from neo-Nazis. By the end of the novel, the reader is truly tired--of the convoluted plot, of the over-populated landscape, and of Aimee. It almost felt as if Cara Black was tired of it all as well: the ending came swiftly, suddenly, and without balancing out the complications of plot. But in spite of those remarks, I will read another novel by this author: there's a great deal of promise in her writing and in her finished product.
33 of 34 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
A Good First Novel,
By
This review is from: Murder in the Marais (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 1) (Paperback)
I bought the book at a university bookstore because I wanted something to read while waiting for my husband to complete a meeting with an architect and I'd already finished reading the book I had with me. Partly I bought it because of the beautiful buildings in the cover photograph (arcitecture on the brain, I guess), partly because I like mysteries, and partly because, like other readers, the premise intrigued me. Overall, while I didn't love it, I enjoyed it a lot. To say the least, I wasn't as disappointed as some were. While I agree with the reviewer that Aimee Leduc is a bit reminiscent of Stephanie Plum (without the bike shorts, Morelli, and Ranger to save her from herself), I disagree that reading the book was a waste: it wasn't.It begins strongly with a very interesting question - how much exactly does our past influence our present and, more importantly, the present of those too young to know the past? Specifically, Black asks what happened to all of the Nazis who escaped, who blended into the Allied woodwork. Could they be around still? Could our lives' paths cross? What would happen if they did? Soli Hecht, a Nazi hunter and old friend of investigator Aimee Leduc's father, hires her to decipher the meaning behind an encrypted Israeli military file containing half of a photo of a cafe in occupied Paris. Aimee takes the case reluctantly, not enjoying personal contact work, as her field is more computer related security; however, she is sucked in by a combination of financial necessity, curiousity, conflicted feelings about her late father, and the corpse she finds while attempting to deliver the results of her initial investigation. From then, the plot grows complicated, even a bit convoluted, with neo-Nazis and shadowy figures attempting to silence Aimee and her partner, Rene. The best parts of the novel are those involving Paris, its history, its mores, and its inhabitants, especially the WW II bits. Black is at her best when explaining the complex channels through which Aimee crawls (sometimes literally) to complete her assignment. In these sections, atmosphere and setting are crucial, and Black melds them seemlessly into the contemporary crime narrative. I don't care whether her explanations of French political processes are valid - that's why they call it fiction - and criticism of her on this point is petty. After all, if I wanted to study the truth of the assassination of JFK, I wouldn't ask Oliver Stone. Her weaknesses, although few, are significant. The first is the affectation of the partner. Partners are fine and they certainly enhance a plot. After all, what would have happened to Spade if Archer hadn't tailed Thursby that night? The problem is the partner-as-dwarf. I find it false, far-fetched, and, honestly, a little irritating, smacking of comic relief where none is needed. Specifically, I mean the scene in the morgue in which Rene is out of commission because he's been hung by his suspenders from a door jamb by a bad guy. Couldn't another, more realistic plot device have been found? Also, the dwarf conceit requires Aimee to carry Rene. Literally. The sceond weakness enters due to the first. Because Rene is a dwarf, Aimee has to be larger than life. She fights like a Kung Fu master, kicking, climbing, and stopping short only of leaping tall buildings in a single bound. While she may be a black belt in some martial art, I find it another affectation. If an author asks her readers to suspend disbelief and live in her relatively realistic world, then her world needs to be. . . well, relatively realistic. The computer genius can be smart, funny, promiscuous, and carry a lot of emotional baggage, but let's not make her a perfect size 6, and able to scale old French buildings in stolen 5 inch heeled designer shoes. In general, the book was a good read, a quick moving plot (just over a week, according to the title pages), with a clever and resourceful heroine, a lightly humorous tone, and a lot of intersting history. Since this whole reading-for-entertainment thing is self-explanatory, I don't expect much more from a novel. If I wanted to intellectually sweat my way through life, I'd finish my PhD in literature quicker. Instead, I think I'll sit on the beach and read Black's other novels.
22 of 23 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pretty Good (if slightly flawed) Debut,
By A. Ross (Washington, DC) - See all my reviews (VINE VOICE) (HALL OF FAME REVIEWER) (TOP 500 REVIEWER) (REAL NAME)
This review is from: Murder in the Marais (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 1) (Paperback)
Pretty nifty series debut set in the old Jewish quarter of Paris. PI Aimée Leduc is unbelievably tough, occasionally foolish, and sometimes weak willed over the course of this mystery which involves events concerning the Nazi occupation, collaborators, survivors, modern day neo-Nazis, and a somewhat unclear EU agreement. The atmosphere is excellent, and the mystery pretty solid, although it's a shade too fantastical for my taste, with too many coincidences and the unmasked villain at the end is kind of unlikely. And despite the premise that the hero and her dwarf partner (Why a dwarf? smacks of trying to be clever in a throwaway manner.) are computer security experts, I found many of the computer hi-jinks unlikely at best, and a weak way of advancing the plot. The other main flaw was that there were a number of French errors throughout, which is a pretty silly mistake to make in a book set in France. Those minor caveats aside, it's a pretty strong mystery that will make you want to visit the Marais on your next trip to Paris.
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