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Emily Cabot is offered a trip of a lifetime when Bertha Palmer asks her to accompany her husband and herself to the Paris Exposition as her private social secretary. To make the trip more manageable for Emily, the Palmers arrange for Emily's husband Stephen to have a position in Paris for the duration of their stay. As her social secretary, Emily accompanies Bertha to the House of Worth, a famous fashion designer. Bertha has brought her famous pearl necklace with her to try on against the gowns designed for her, but somehow the necklace goes missing in route. Bertha wants to keep the disappearance of the necklace from her husband lest he thinks she's been careless and she is worried her son may be somehow involved. The missing necklace becomes secondary when Emily finds the very much dead hatmaker during the engagement party for Worth's daughter.
The strongest element of this book is the author's ability to put the reader on the scene in Paris in 1900. The details of the House of Worth, the various streets of Paris and most especially the Exposition itself were astounding.
Likewise, the author has made the characters quite lifelike. Emily, Bertha and to a lesser degree Mr Palmer and Emily's husband come alive for the reader. I felt I was with Emily and Bertha at the House of Worth and the families as they traveled around Paris.
The one quibble I have with this is that as a reader, I became so caught up with the atmosphere of the novel and involved with the day to day lives of the Palmers and Emily's family that the mystery became almost an afterthought. The author's development of the crimes was just not quite as thorough as her character and setting development.
MURDER AT THE PARIS EXPOSITION is the sixth book in the Emily Cabot series but the first that I have read. I enjoyed Emily enough that I have already ordered the first two books in the series.
§ Caryn St.Clair resides in University City, Missouri and is a former elementary school media specialist, President of the Parks Commission and a docent at the St.Louis Zoo.
Reviewed by Caryn St Clair, September 2016
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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