Murder in Montmartre (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 6) [Paperback]

Cara Black (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 1, 2007

“Chilling. . . . The book vividly depicts a gritty, working-class part of Paris. . . . Black succeeds in making the reader feel the damp, the snow, the fear.”—Publishers Weekly
 
“I always wondered why I used to quicken my step in Montmartre. After reading Cara Black’s wonderful book, now I know. As atmospheric as anything by John le Carré.”—Philip Kerr, author of Berlin Noir
 
Aimée’s childhood friend, Laure, is a policewoman. Her partner, Jacques, has set up a meeting in Montmartre with an informer. When Laure goes along as backup, Jacques is lured to a rooftop, where he is shot to death. Laure’s gun has been fired, gunpowder residue is on her hands, and she is charged with her partner’s murder.
 
The police close ranks against the alleged cop killer. Aimée is determined to clear Laure’s name. In doing so, she encounters separatist terrorists, Montmartre prostitutes, a surrealist painter’s stepdaughter, and a crooked Corsican bar owner, and learns of “Big Ears”—the French “ear in the sky” that records telephonic and electronic communications for the security services. Identifying Jacques’ murderer brings her closer to solving her own father’s death, which still haunts her. She cannot rest until she finds out who was responsible.

For more information, visit www.carablack.com

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Intrepid Aimée Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, policewoman Laure Rousseau, who's charged with shooting her partner to death, in Black's chilling sixth novel to feature the Paris PI (after 2005's Murder in Clichy). Aimée knows the solution to proving Laure's innocence lies somewhere in the hilltop maze of the seedy Montmartre neighborhood—perhaps with a boy who says he witnessed the murder, or an aging prostitute, or any of a number of toughs or even Corsican separatists. Set in January 1995, the book vividly depicts a gritty, working-class part of Paris where rents don't always get paid and not everyone has a bed for the night. Black succeeds in making the reader feel the damp, the snow, the fear. In the process of helping Laure, Aimée not only resolves a past police scandal involving her dead father but gains in compassion and wisdom. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

From Booklist

Black continues her peregrinations around Paris' most history-drenched neighborhoods (Murder in Clichy, 2005) with this sixth in the series, this time set in Montmartre. Aimee Leduc, the intrepid computer-security analyst who can't keep her nose out of murder investigations, smells fresh blood after a childhood friend, now a policewoman, is accused of shooting her partner. Aimee doesn't buy it and takes to the streets and alleys of Montmartre in search of the real story. The trail leads to a group of Corsican separatists, aimed at achieving their political goals by any means necessary. As always, Black uses landscape for far more than window dressing, incorporating details of Montmartre history into the fabric of the plot and never missing an opportunity to connect, say, a Metro station named for a Communist Resistance fighter to the struggles of contemporary Corsicans. A common theme running throughout Black's consistently engaging series, in fact, is the frustration of various immigrant groups trying to live in and around Paris, a topic of ever more urgent concern. Bill Ott
Copyright © American Library Association. All rights reserved --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

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Product Details

• Paperback: 306 pages
• Publisher: Soho Crime (March 1, 2007)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1569474451
• ISBN-13: 978-1569474457
• Product Dimensions: 5 x 0.9 x 7.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 4.8 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 3.6 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (11 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #422,897 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

Cara Black lives in Noe Valley with her bookseller husband, Jun, owner of Foto-Graphix Books, and her son, Tate. She's a San Francisco Library Laureate, Macavity and three time Anthony award-nominee for her series, Aimée Leduc Investigations, set in Paris

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Evocative story of Paris, May 29, 2006

By 

booksforabuck "BooksForABuck" (Long Beach, CA) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Murder in Montmartre (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 6) (Hardcover)

Private Investigator Aimee Leduc is at her most sensitive right after she's dumped by her boyfriend, so she takes it hard when a childhood friend, cop Laure, is accused of murdering her partner. Aimee knows Laure would never have killed the man she viewed as her mentor, but the police have their suspect and Laure is comotose and unable to defend herself. It's up to Aimee to do the job.

Aimee's investigation quickly takes her out of the everyday world of Paris into a seamy underworld of prostitutes, underemployed musicians living rough, and Corsican terrorists. It is clear to Aimee that the murder being pinned on Laure is somehow connected to the Corsicans, but the most likely suspect turns out to be the musician who restarts Aimee's bruised libido.

Always in the background is the fear of police corruption--a corruption that destroyed Aimee's father and that continues to haunt much of the Paris police department. What secrets did Laure hide? Could Aimee's father have been, after all, involved with some underhanded scheme?

Author Cara Black continues her Aimee Leduc series with an intriguing tale set in a world where ancient vendetta coexists with modern terrorism, and where the spirit of Tolouse Lautrec haunts the streets of Montmartre, the section of Paris he profiled--and a section of Paris that remains distinct from the rest of the city.

There were times when Aimee's investigation seemed a bit improbable (her invasion of the police computer system seemed particularly far-fetched), but Black's mystery is more of an impressionistic painting than a hard-edged photograph. If you're interested in Paris and in reading an author who treats that city as a dominant character, you won't want to miss MURDER IN MONTMARTRE

4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Not Amy LeDuc's best case, December 2, 2006

By 

Blue in Washington "Barry Ballow" (Washington, DC United States) - See all my reviews
(TOP 500 REVIEWER)   

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This review is from: Murder in Montmartre (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 6) (Hardcover)

I'm a great fan of Cara Black's "Murder in..." series, but I found myself in a bad neighborhood with this book in more ways than one. The story line revolves around the suspected terrorist activities of Corsican nationalists (or are they gangsters?) and detective Amy LeDuc's related attempts to clear a childhood friend of a murder charge. The descriptions of Paris streets, cafes, restaurants and other sites are as interesting as ever, but the book's story line is contrived and uneven. The story opens with a hardly credible, but helpful-for-the-scenario, breakup of LeDuc and her doctor boyfriend. The book ends with LeDuc in the arms of another BF, whom she barely knows and for whom readers have had scant information about from the body of the story. There are other problems with character development here as well--LeDuc's partner, Rene, is given unusually short shrift (what's up with the new girlfriend?) and the childhood friend that LeDuc is trying assist is written into a convenient coma-like silence without much explanation to the reader.
The main point here is that Cara Black has done much better with other stories in this series. If you are considering this book, I believe that you would do better to start with "Murder in the Bastille" or "Murder in the Marais."

5 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Watch out for the holes under Sacre-Coeur in Montmartre, October 19, 2006

By 

Grey Wolffe "Zeb Kantrowitz" (North Waltham, MA United States) - See all my reviews
(VINE VOICE)   

This review is from: Murder in Montmartre (Aimee Leduc Investigations, No. 6) (Hardcover)

It's January 1995, and Aimee is once again involved in a murder mystery that leads her again to secrets concerning her father's death. With the Church of the Sacred Heart (Sacre-Coeur), the neighborhood of the Mound of Martyrs (Montmartre), and the stone quarry caverns below as background, Aimee tries to prove that her childhood friend (Laure) did not kill her policemen partner (yes, her friend is a flic). Laure's father was Aimee's father's partner before he left the force.

Her new friend, Guy the Doctor, has split and gone to the Sudan with Doctors Sans Frontiers (Doctors without Borders). An old friend, who Aimee has been looking for for years (Jaubert), and was part of her father's police academy group along with Morbier, turns up in a spot she least expects.

As always, our heroine, Aimee, is not only resourceful but always stylish (a true fashionista) as she snoops out the bad guys. Somehow, this time she manages to stay off her scooter and therefore is kept from running into anything or anyone.

The plotline involving some fake Corsican Separatists, who are busy selling the guns (of eastern european make) that were the basis for the case her father had been working on at the time of his death, help Aimee to bring some nagging problems from that time to closure. The rest of the plot is there for Aimee to have something to do until the more important personal issues are resolved.