Cara Black Invites You to Paris. Oui?

Second book featuring a strong and unconventional woman during our celebration of Women’s History Month.

You can win the book (signed by the author) AND you can win a trip to Paris. Read on..

Photo by Phil Beard, who says “This is boulevard de Montparnasse at the junction with boulevard Raspail. The Métro station is Vavin and the corner café is La Rotonde, in its day a notable haunt of the avant-garde.(In)1916 .. Picasso and a group of friends, including Max Jacob and Modigliani, had lunch here..”

Place: Montparnasse , Paris

Book: Murder Below Montparnasse by Cara Black (NEW THIS MONTH: March 2013)

Cara Black  juggles. And she does it extremely well.

If you have not yet met Black, she writes a mystery series with each book focused on a different arrondissement  of Paris.  I talked about Murder in the Latin Quarter here in 2011.  That book was the 9th in the series, written in 2009, and Black is still going strong.

Murder Below Montparnasse is lucky 13 in the series featuring the  intelligent and unpredictable detective Aimèe Leduc. All the things I said about Aimèe Leduc in that prior review still hold. I said then that I’d like to have her as a guide to Paris, and lo and behold, some lucky person is going to go to Paris next October not with the fictional character, but the real author– Cara Black– as a Paris guide.  Although Cara Black lives in San Francisco, you’ll believe she MUST be a Paris resident when you read her books. She is such an expert on Paris, that Lonely Planet featured her in their City Guide to Paris.

Lights in Montparnasse, Paris, Photo by Steve Hanna

Before you start packing your bag for your trip to Paris with Cara Black, let me explain what I meant in the opening by saying that she juggles. The complexity of her plots can be almost overwhelming, combining as they do a search for a MacGuffin (see former review for explanation of that)– in this case a lost painting by Modigliani; lesser-known sub-communities of Paris– here it’s Russian emigres; history–this time Lenin and the Trotskyites; geography–following Aimèe as she zips around Paris on her motor scooter or by Metro or foot; Aimèe’s personal life; a sub-plot or two (her trusted assistant and computer whiz is hired to go to Zeelakon Vallaaay where he discovers a plot which makes him flee through Mexico back to Paris) and more involving her detective business office and co-workers. In fact, at one point in Murder Below Montparnasse, Aimèe takes stock of the problems she is juggling and you can almost hear the author thinking, “What have I gotten myself into?”

A woman she meets asks,

“Been under more stress lately?” 

Apart from her best friend’s defection to America, Saj’s injury, the murder of an old man who’d known her long-gone mother, a stolen Modigliani, death threats from Serbs, being attacked in her office and almost drowned in a bucket….

“A little more than usual,”  Aimèe admitted.

Black keeps the reader in the loop with tried and true mystery writer tricks, but she uses them so skillfully that they don’t look like tricks.  As with any mystery, there is enough information for the reader to solve the mystery (I did), and enough false clues to thoroughly muddy the water. You stick with the book, not just because of the puzzles you are helping the detective unravel, but because Aimèe Leduc is such good company. And she has an apartment on Ile St. Louis, which I deeply covet, but that’s MY problem.

Finally Black ends each book with a cliffhanger to make sure you’ll come back for the next installment. And without giving anything away, I have to say that I was totally stunned when I saw the cliffhanger in this book. There is no way that I will miss the next volume of Aimèe’s adventures in Paris.

The Aimèe Leduc mystery series certainly belongs on the travel shelf of anyone who ever has been to or hopes to go to Paris. But even if you have no interest in Paris (is there such a person in the world?) you’ll enjoy reading it for the unraveling of the mystery.

HOW TO WIN THE  KILLER TRIP TO PARIS

• Purchase the limited, signed 1st edition of the physical book or win a copy in our drawing (see below) OR
• Purchase an e-book OR
• Enter at a Cara Black tour event around the country (See the list of appearances here.)
• ARIZONANS: Black will be at the Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale on March 13!
• Submit the entry forms you get through one of those steps between now and April 30, 2013.
• Please read complete rules at the Paris Is For Murder site.

HOW TO WIN A SIGNED 1ST EDITION OF  MURDER BELOW MONTPARNASSE

• Leave a comment below telling me which arrondissement of Paris is your favorite, or which you would most like to visit, and why.
• Get an extra chance by leaving a separate comment to tell me if you have a subscription to A Traveler’s Library
• If you do not have a subscription,  Sign up for our email subscription!
• Tweet the following message: Cara Black is giving away a killer trip to Paris and @pen4hire is giving away Black’s latest mystery novel. http://wp.me/pxThu-4Ev
• Check out all the fine print (like over 18, resident of U.S., deadline of March 18, etc.) at my Contest page.

Note: I linked the contest entry purchases through my Amazon Affiliate account if you want the convenience of purchasing at Amazon (and if you want to contribute a few pence to A Traveler’s Library without it costing you anything.) HOWEVER, I want to make it clear that I love Independent bookstores, and you should check out your local independent to see if they carry Cara Black’s books.

Second, you should know that the publisher provided me with the signed copy of the book that I am giving away. (Earning me great karma, because that means YOU can enter the drawing to go to Paris and I can’t).

Finally, the two wonderful photos used here are credited. They came from Flickr and are used with a Creative Commons license.  Please click on each photo to learn more.

Vote for my article on WorldTravelist.com, sharing the best travel content on the web.

Tags: Cara Black, Contest, Montparnasse, Mystery novel, Paris, win a book, win a trip