Murder in Pigalle

January 13, 2014
Set amid the madness of the 1998 World Cup final, Black’s well-crafted 14th Aimée Leduc investigation (after 2013’s Murder Below Montparnasse) finds the Parisian PI, who’s five-months pregnant, ready to take a break and ponder her future as a single mom. Aimée has reduced her workload, taking mostly cases involving cybercrime, but the disappearance of 13-year-old Zazie Duclos, the daughter of good friends and an Aimée wannabe, snaps her back into active investigator mode. Further complicating the disappearance—in addition to World Cup fever and a daring heist—is a string of recent rapes by a serial pedophile that the police appear to have put on the back burner. Despite her pregnancy, Aimée throws her whole self into the mix, risking life and limb to rescue the girl. A strong sense of place and a deliciously twisted plot more than compensate for some stilted dialogue. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown.

March 15, 2014
Even an unplanned pregnancy can't slow down Paris detective Aimee Leduc (Murder Below Montparnasse, 2013, etc.). Pigalle in the 1990s is still very much a mixed quartier. Sex shops and seedy bars jostle family-owned stores and bistros whose owners live in small apartments above. 13-year old Zazie Duclos lives in one such apartment, perched atop her parents' cafe. But Zazie wants to become a detective, not a shopkeeper. She haunts Aimee's office on rue de Louvre, hoping to learn the secret of Leduc's detective success. Then, suddenly, Zazie has a case of her own. A rapist has his sights set on the young lycee students in her neighborhood. Zazie borrows a high-resolution camera from a friend and takes pictures of a mec she's been shadowing. Armed with a FotoFit of the suspect, she asks Aimee to help her investigate. Then she disappears. The attacks continue. Sylvaine Olivet dies after being assaulted. But neighborhood parents close ranks against Aimee: Melanie Vasseur's parents spirit her away to a clinic in Switzerland, the Olivets threaten to press charges against her, even Papa Duclos begs her to stop investigating. She doesn't, much to the distress of her business partner, Rene Friant, who's frantically ordering port-a-cribs for the office while Melac, her baby's dad, sits at the bedside of his critically injured daughter in Brittany. Although Madame Pelletier of the Brigade des Minuers insists that Zazie's probably off chasing some boy, Aimee knows that somewhere in the stewpot of Pigalle, Zazie is waiting for her, the only person who can come to her rescue. Black's 15th shows Aimee just as determined as ever to live life on her own terms and stand up for those who can't.

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March 1, 2014

Edgy and appealing French detective Aimee Leduc is back, and she's got a young detective in her wake: 13-year-old Zazie, the red-headed daughter of the cafe owners at the corner. Distressed by an attack on a girl at her school, Zazie is compiling a dossier with news clippings about a similar attack and tracking a suspect to a local bar. Aimee tries to dissuade her from further sleuthing by promising to look at her dossier, but then Zazie goes missing. While Aimee pulls out all the stops in a frantic search, an ex-con trying to go straight finds himself dragged into one last operation with the daughter he's trying to wrest from her wastrel mother held over his head as a threat. As readers anticipate how these two cases will converge, suspense remains taut, further heightened by Aimee's being five months pregnant. At the end, though, she proves to be one tough mother-to-be with a gun. VERDICT Following Murder Below Montparnasse, this latest in the treasured Aimee Leduc series keeps to the high standard of the series while nicely deepening Aimee as a character and leading her in a new direction.--Barbara Hoffert, Library Journal

Copyright 2014 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

February 15, 2014
Aim'eLeduc is crashing around Paris again, this timeduring the 1998 World Cup in Francein search of her pal Zazie, a 13-year-old wannabe detective who has disappeared and may be the latest victim of a serial rapist preying on young girls in the Pigalle district. Ah, but that's not all: Aimee is five months pregnant and is doing her running accompanied by the Bump. Black cleverly mixes the domestic situation (Aimee has yet to tell the Bump's father what's happening) and the red-herring-laden mystery (Is Zazie's disappearance even connected to the rapist?). The plot gets a little crazy this time, and the resolution seems a tad abrupt, but series fans won't notice, as they'll be thoroughly caught up in the ongoing story lines regarding Aim'e's romantic life, her relationship with partner and best friend Rene (struggling to keep his own romantic feelings for Aim'e secret), and, of course, Aim'e's terrorist mother, now confirmed to be alive but still off the radar. The combination of vividly evoked Parisian neighborhoods and a bewitching, stylish heroine (now adorned in vintage Dior maternity togs) continues to make this series as tasty as a chunk of French chocolate.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2014, American Library Association.)