Paris City of Night [Paperback]

David Downie (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 15, 2009

Paris is alluring, seductive, and by no means benign as Jay Grant well knows. Orange alerts make people trigger-happy. Red and black alerts are worse. They transform the City of Light into a hellish City of Night . . .

Jay Anthony Grant, aka JAG, the son of a recently deceased CIA officer, has serious issues about his father s past. Off to meet his fiancée and spend a winter vacation in Paris, that past draws JAG into a tangled Parisian web of intrigue. An orange alert as New Year s looms in the form of a twinkling Eiffel Tower and fanatics on both sides of the terror divide are out to make JAG s life unpleasant.

A suspenseful Hitchcockian page-turner, Paris City of Night is a classic thriller set in contemporary Paris. This Paris isn t the sparkling City of Light but a shadowy place full of cheats, forgers, murderers, U.S. Security operatives and aging Cold Warriors.

Best to start reading this one early in the evening... unless, that is, you don t mind losing a night s sleep! writes the best-selling thriller author David Hunt. Anton Gill, creator of the world-best-selling Egyptian Mysteries, calls the book, Unputdownable a real page-turner. No one should miss this. Diane Johnson thinks Paris City of Night is a wild ride through the dark side of Paris with a writer who knows the city s streets and their secrets...

Editorial Reviews

Review

Sex and the CIA. Okay, this book s hero, Jay Grant, whose father was a CIA man, has got two women in his life although only one of them really has his best interests at heart. It takes Jay quite a while to figure that out, however, as he is pursued from one end of Paris to another trying to figure out why both the CIA and a bunch of bad guys are after some daguerreotypes--could it be they contain the codes needed to blow up the city? Or to stop the city from being blown up? Only a longtime Paris resident writer like David Downie could weave City of Light street scenes so integrally into a fast-paced thriller like this and not lose the plot thread. And talk about your celebrity cameos! Adolph Eichmann, Jim Morrison--never mind that they are dead, they both play key roles. Downie brings both Paris and his characters alive with an economical but richly descriptive prose style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Eric Ambler. A must read! --Michael Balter, Balter's Blog

Photographer Jay Grant used his darkroom skills just for fun, producing some believable fake daguerreotypes but when one shows up at a Paris auction, threatening to connect him as a forger and a fraud, Grant dives in to recover the remaining fakes and keep his hands clean. Unfortunately, he didn t know how deep the water was: as the son of a spy, memories from his childhood and another set of daguerrotypes believed to contain important secret messages encoded in a way only Jay can decipher make him a target for the CIA, French intelligence, and possibly other spies and spooks with uncertain allegiances. David Downie s new novel Paris City of Night is Jay s story, stringing together terrorism, auction house fraud, murder, photography, and Nazis into a captivating mystery. [...] Downie s attention to detail and the smooth inclusion of the factual and the fanciful help give the book the believable weight which makes it a much stronger book than you might expect... --Derek Dahlsad, Collectors Quest

About the Author

David Downie has lived in Paris since 1986. A journalist, he is the author of one other crime novel and a dozen nonfiction books, including the acclaimed essay collection Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light.

Product Details

• Paperback: 213 pages
• Publisher: Schoenhof's Foreign Books (June 15, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1601110162
• ISBN-13: 978-1601110169
• Product Dimensions: 7.9 x 5 x 0.5 inches
• Shipping Weight: 6.4 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (24 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,110,310 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

More About the Author

A native San Franciscan, I've called Paris home since 1986. I live and work in the Marais, and travel widely in France and Italy.
For over 20 years my travel, food, wine and arts features have appeared in about 50 magazines and newspapers worldwide, from Bon Appetit, Gastronomica, The Los Angeles Times and Town & Country Travel to the San Francisco Chronicle, concierge.com, epicurious.com, salon.com and gadling.com. I've been contributing editor, European arts editor or Paris correspondent for half a dozen magazines, and am currently a European correspondent for gadling, the popular literary travel website, as well as theramblingepicure.com, a site dedicated to real food.
My latest web venture is wanderingliguria.com, featuring everything you ever wanted to know about the Italian Riviera (Cinque Terre, Portofino, Genoa and more).
After writing a cookbook or two in the 1990s and early 2000s, I put together 30 essays about Paris and published them under the title Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light, with striking black-and-white photography by Alison Harris (www.alisonharris.com). The book got raves, went through multiple print runs, and was reissued in a fully updated, expanded and redesigned edition--with photos by Alison--in the prestigious Armchair Traveler series published by Broadway Books (Random House).
My other recent books include Paris City of Night, a classic thriller set in Paris; and three Terroir Guides--Food Wine Italian Riviera & Genoa, Food Wine Rome, and Food Wine Burgundy, published by The Little Bookroom.
In March 2011 the same publisher brought out the lavishly illustrated travel book Quiet Corners of Rome, with more stunning photography, again by Alison Harris.
For bite-sized portions, try some of the anthologies I've contributed to, from The Collected Traveler Paris, Southwest France and Italy to Salon.com's Wanderlust; Travelers Tales: Adventures in Wine Country; Saveur Cooks Authentic French and Italian; Pizza: A Slice of Heaven; the best-selling Secrets of the Code and Secrets of Angels & Demons; the humor anthology By The Seat of My Pants; and A Moveable Feast.
After a quarter century I continue to enjoy living in Paris, and working and traveling throughout Europe, especially Italy. And I enjoy sharing my experiences with my readers, and taking them on private tours of Paris, Rome, Burgundy and the Italian Riviera. Please visit my personal website www.davidddownie.com and my "Paris, Paris Tours" blog site: http://parisparistours.blogspot.com/. All the best, David

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

7 of 7 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars LEAVES THE DA VINCI CODE IN THE DUST, June 19, 2009

By 

Tick Pyne "wirefox79" (New York, NY) - See all my reviews

This review is from: Paris City of Night (Paperback)

After sitting up all night, unable to put down this amazingly crafted, sensational book, I can only recommend it wholeheartedly and hope that it receives even part of the extraordinary recognition it merits. The writing is sublime. I have read many thrillers and many thrillers that take place all over the world, but this is stupendous, addictive and stays with you after you've finished as you marvel at Downie, wondering: "How did he DO that?" Please give yourself a real treat, get your own copy and then just see if you can put it down before you've finished it. I dare you!

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Up all night with the city of light (night), July 6, 2009

By 

H. Rochefort (France) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paris City of Night (Paperback)

"Paris City of Night" is so gripping that I stayed up reading it all night and finished it over breakfast. So hyped up, so engrossed was I by how the story was going to turn out that I forgot that I was ALSO eating and dropped a nice splotch of egg yolk on my beige slacks. "Thriller" is right... What a yarn! And what knowledge of photography the author has! It's extremely well-written (but that's no surprise, given Downie's other books) and I loved all the detail about the Paris neighborhoods and streets, of course. Bravo, bravo to the author for pulling this off. And bravo for writing it in such a made-for-movie way. If I were a rich producer, I'd grab it in a nanosecond. I hope to see it on the screen someday. Whatever the fate of this masterpiece (and I hope it will have a long and healthy life!), I'm giving it my hearty and early endorsement.

8 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Paris You've Never Experienced, July 25, 2009

By 

Jordan S. Simon (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
(REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Paris City of Night (Paperback)

I originally discovered Downie's writing through his deliciously evocative food and travel books, so was most curious to read his fiction. It was equally thrilling, albeit in a completely different genre.

Paris is affectionately nicknamed "The City of Light." But where there's light, there's inevitably shadow. Like many expat writers, Downie knows his adopted turf better than many locals -- witness the spot-on description of Jim Morrison's gravesite or a seedy barber shop near the Pantheon -- and he illuminates those hidden recesses, painting a vivid chiaroscuro portrait of the shady Parisian underbelly. Paris, City of Night recalls the complex political intrigues of Le Carré, the shadowy ambiance of Ambler, the psychological insight of Simenon, the cat-and-mouse tension of Highsmith... yet showcases Downie's unique voice and pitch-perfect perspective on his adopted city. And his prose is relentlessly entertaining (or entertainingly relentless). His recipe mixes secret Daguerreotype codes, embittered Cold Warriors, terrorists, and a somewhat reluctant, ambivalent "son of a spook" hero -- with a soupcon of sex and even spicier political commentary.

After reading this twisting compulsive CIA actioner, you'll never think of Paris in quite the same way.

For a sunnier view of his expat hometown, I recommend reading Downie's ode in essay form (Paris Paris) or one of his marvelous cookbooks (which also include delectable details of local flavor as well as flavors).