The Montmartre Investigation

August 1, 2010

A single red shoe draws Parisian bookseller Victor Legris into another tantalizing murder puzzle.

The young ladies of Mademoiselle Bontemps' boarding school look forward to every outing with breathless anticipation. Love-struck��lisa contemplates a secret rendezvous with her admirer Gaston, and stiff Monsieur Mori shares with the headmistress his concern for the safety of his goddaughter Iris. The City of Light bustles with activity�and romance in 1891,�its streets crisscrossed by the "purveyor of milk" Gr�goire Mercier and many others. Among these is a nameless man with obsessively mercurial habits and deadly intentions. Meantime, Victor spends too much time away from his book shop in pursuit of Tasha, a vibrant and flirtatious painter. His absence leaves his assistant Jojo with the solitude for a more melancholy romantic reverie. His mother Madame Pignot, a costermonger, deplores his thin, pale, unshaven appearance and begs him to eat. Then a strangely attired man brings a lady's slipper decorated with pearls to the bookshop, whose address is jammed inside "like an inner sole." Could there be a connection to the young woman found strangled and disfigured by acid at Killer's Crossing? Victor and Jojo can't resist finding out.

The pseudonymous�Izner creates a tapestry of Parisian portraits and name-drops like crazy (Bernhardt, Anatole France, Toulouse-Lautrec). Legris's third case (The Disappearance at P�re-Lachaise, 2009, etc.) is a bagatelle, but an attractive one for those as stimulated as Victor by the city's�joie de vivre. �

(COPYRIGHT (2010) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

September 1, 2010
The sights, sounds, and culture of 1890s Paris are brought to life in this densely written mystery, the third in the series. Bookseller Victor Legris becomes involved in solving another crime when a womans red shoe is dropped off at his shop. He learns that a young woman has been found dead, barefoot, her face disfigured by acid. Legris believes that there is a connection between the shoe and the barefoot victim, and as he investigates, additional murders occura man found dead in a barrel of wine and a famous performer strangled in her home. Along with his assistant, Joseph Pignot, Legris connects the killings with a scam perpetrated in Lyon years ago. Is one of the victims out for revenge? Meanwhile, Legris, unsure of the loyalty of his lover, the beautiful artist Tasha, struggles with jealousy. Populated with both fictional characters and real people of the time, the novel makes the most of fin-de-si'cle Parisian nightlife as a setting for crime.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2010, American Library Association.)