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I love Cara Black's descriptions of Parisian life. In her novels she divides Paris into quarters and has her detective, Aimee Leduc, investigate murder in the Marais, in Belville, in the Sentier, and now MURDER IN THE BASTILLE. That is the area just east of the center focusing on the Place de la Bastille, marking the totally destroyed prison that on July 14, 1789, saw the first big blow of the French Revolution. The new opera house is located at one side of the Place, and behind the opera is the Hospital Quinze Vingts, which figures prominently in the story. Aimee has cause to know the hospital, for early in the story she is bludgeoned on the head and loses her vision. In fact, for most of the story she is blind and must rely on others to help her, especially on her assistant, the dwarf Rene Friant. Was Aimee mistaken for another woman who was similarly dressed? Good question, because the other woman is found murdered not far away. Aimee, whose profession is as a computer expert, is also the daughter of a deceased police official, and thus she knows the police department well. But not as well as she'd like because the 'flics' with whom she has contact, including those who were good friends with her father, consider her rather a meddler, and have little time -- or information -- to give her. Police interest in her now is as one more case to solve and as a link to the greater crime of the murdered woman. As Aimee recovers from the blow, but still blind, she must re-learn some of the simplest things in life, such as how to walk, how to face the person she's talking to, how to fold paper money so as to know the different denominations, and such. A Greek expression "Listen to see" might be changed for Aimee to "Become blind to see." Through her lack of vision as she walks about the Bastille area, sometimes with Rene, sometimes with a doctor in whom she acquires a mutual romantic interest, sometimes with others, and sometimes by herself, we see descriptions of the streets, the public buildings, the shops (ateliers), the people, and the activities that we might otherwise miss, because now Aimee must pay excruciating attention with her other senses to her most common surroundings, both to protect herself and to uncover details about the crime and the suspects. The suspects include a furniture maker, an advertising executive, an art appraiser, a construction company that uses immigrant Romanian thugs to intimidate older people to leave their residences in the buildings the company wants to convert to expensive housing, and others. Aimee is aided, consoled, and advised by other blind people and by a lodging house owner, but she despairs of ever getting back her sight. The doctors hold little hope for her, just enough so she doesn't give up completely. And in spite of her new handicap, she gets closer to the perpetrator, so close that she becomes a menace. Black's success in this series is above all due to her fine discriminating descriptions of Paris. She obviously knows and loves the city she has chosen to feature. Although she lives in San Francisco with her bookseller husband, she makes frequent trips to Paris, and she is superb in throwing a spotlight on the city's nooks, crannies, and inhabitants. She makes Paris, that most wonderful of European cities, come alive, as if the reader were there. She is to Paris what Colin Dexter is to Oxford, Laura Lippman to Baltimore, Magdalen Nabb to Florence, and J. A. Jance to Seattle. There's nothing like a large city with a personality of its own in which to place a well-written mystery.
Reviewed by Eugene Aubrey Stratton, March 2004
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Contact: Yvonne Klein (ymk@reviewingtheevidence.com)
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