Another Top Drawer SOHO Mystery! | Murder in the Sentier

Choppy and Uneven - An Author in Search of a Voice | Murder in the Sentier | Cara Black

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	• Murder in the Sentier Cara Black Soho Press, 2008 - 336 pages average customer review:based on 14 reviews view larger image
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highly recommended

I didn't want it to end...

and that's the truth. This is the best Cara Black mystery I have read yet. The plot and the details of Paris were so interesting I hated to have to put the book down to do something else (like eat or sleep). I'll add some personal reasons why this book appealed to me, since there are a lot of rave reviews already. First, I have spent time in many parts of Paris, but never the Sentier. I had just finished Sarah Turnbull's Almost French, a nonfiction book about an Australian who comes to live in the Sentier. While it gave me an overview, Black supplies historical and cultural details of the neighborhood that now make me feel I have been up and down every street. The book also comes with a map of the area so that readers can easily follow along.

The German terrorists Black bases the story on were real. The Baader-Meinhof gang came to trial in 1975 and I was in Germany at the time. I still have the issue of Der Spiegel magazine that features the indictment on the cover. Much of the detail she uses about the fictional gang members is actually true. "Ulrike" would be Ulrike Maria Meinhof, a journalist turned terrorist. She actually did have a family, with twin daughters, that she abandoned. She was not a young student, however, but a woman over 40. She and others really were found hanged in their cells, and whether it was suicide or homicide has never been proven. "Marcus" is Andreas Bernd Baader, and he was in fact supported by Jean-Paul Sartre and other well known persons. For information on the real story, I recommend www.baader-meinhof.com. This site is in English.

Here is my one criticism: if an author is not fluent in a language (German), it is better not to use it or to have a German-speaker proof it. Spelling and grammatical errors aside, there are two things non-German-speaking Americans dont always know. One is that all nouns are always capitalized. I had to convince one of my bosses of this (in publishing) because he thought it looked "weird". Most importantly, English and German do NOT translate literally into each other, and one has to be very careful with idioms. A word in English can have five or six different meanings, while in German there may be five or six different words, one for each meaning. Please, Ms Black, dont get in over your head. It's not hard to make sure of the correct way of saying things, in any language you have your characters use. If you cant do it, use English. Readers will assume that a Russian is thinking in Russian, und so weiter.

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Another Top Drawer SOHO Mystery!

First, all these Soho mystery paperbacks are excellent,including the book design! Murder in the Sentier belongs among the top European mysteries, and C. Black's series is right up there with Simenon's Maigret, from decades back. Higher praise does not exist! Our odd and flamboyant German/French late 20's Detective/Computer Expert Heroine meets a shady lady, who may have some secrets about our heroine's mother, and any part she played in a near defunct 1970's Terrorist group. Unfortunately, the shady lady is shot dead while waiting to meet Aimee at a Paris Cemetary. The rest is a fine whodunnit, plus very fine scenes in the Sentier neighborhood, along with a motley crew of Parisians of many sorts, from Bourse traders, Coffee House Turks, and Street People of all sorts. Stylistically, this is way above many competitors in the Euro-Mystery field, and really a pleasure to read thruout! One of the final scenes may have been a bit predictable to an old mystery hand, but still done with real polish and flair throughout! In fact, this is one of the few mysteries good enough to merit a re-reading, which I might do soon!

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Choppy and Uneven - An Author in Search of a Voice

Aimee LeDuc is drawn into the aftermath and repercussions of 1970's terrorist groups. It appears that her mother was involved in some way with the kidnapping of a French industrialist, and that her father, a policeman now dead from a terrorist bombing, was framed for the theft of the industrialist's extensive art collection.

This could be an excellent novel, but the author simply doesn't know how to make scene transitions, and isn't really very good at dialogue. Maybe she needs a good editor. The story seemed choppy and disconnected; the LeDuc character is like an unfunny and unappealing version of Kinsey Milhone. The attempts to work French expressions into the dialogue simply do not work. In short, this was an annoying novel laid atop a compelling story.

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I really wanted to like this book...

This title seemed to have so much going for it: local author, attractive design, Parisian setting.... For me, it just didn't deliver. While the story line is rather (too?) complex, that wasn't a major issue. Instead, I felt that at least two of the major questions posed by the mystery remained completely unresolved at the end, while the momentary distraction that permits our heroine to escape from the clutches of death seemed as contrived to me as if a bolt of lightning had shot from the sky and knocked a gun from the clutches of the villain. In addition, the Parisian atmosphere struck me as a very thin veneer indeed, with unidiomatic French phrases inserted at regular intervals (literal translations of English that don't have the same meanings in French, a reference to the female protagonist in the masculine form...). Other details are off, too (musician Youssou N'Dour's name is misspelled, Pink Floyd's 'Dark Side of the Moon' is referred to as having been released a year earlier than it in fact was, etc). I can say that my attention was at least held to the end. Was I expecting too much?

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Detective Aimée Leduc fears that a group reminiscent of the 1960s Red Terror gang is on the loose?and her long-lost mother may just be one of them.

reviews: page 1, 2, 3

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