Murder in Montmartre

December 5, 2005
Intrepid Aimée Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, policewoman Laure Rousseau, who's charged with shooting her partner to death, in Black's chilling sixth novel to feature the Paris PI (after 2005's Murder in Clichy
). Aimée knows the solution to proving Laure's innocence lies somewhere in the hilltop maze of the seedy Montmartre neighborhood—perhaps with a boy who says he witnessed the murder, or an aging prostitute, or any of a number of toughs or even Corsican separatists. Set in January 1995, the book vividly depicts a gritty, working-class part of Paris where rents don't always get paid and not everyone has a bed for the night. Black succeeds in making the reader feel the damp, the snow, the fear. In the process of helping Laure, Aimée not only resolves a past police scandal involving her dead father but gains in compassion and wisdom.

March 1, 2006
This two-volume companion to the British novel contains more than 1000 A-to-Z entries (each averaging several pages in length) on English-writing authors hailing from either the British Isles or the Commonwealth as well as on novels, pertinent literary terms, themes, concepts, influential periodicals, and subgenres. Authors Brackett (English, Triton Coll.; "Restless Genius: The Story of Virginia Woolf", who has published several reference books and biographies for young adults, and Gaydosik (English, Southwestern Oklahoma State Univ.) divide the work into two parts: Volume 1 covers the British novel from the early 17th up to the 19th century, and Volume 2 begins with the year 1900 and spans to the present. Indexes, appendixes, short bibliographies at the end of many of the entries, a glossary, and cross references are also included. Bottom Line mong the many resources published on this topic, this set -s very straightforward style and analytic method reflect a concern that too scholarly an approach might pose a -reading comprehension challenge - for some readers. This makes it more suitable for high school and public libraries than for college-level collections. As with any such set, libraries that can afford duplication will find some entries here for works and authors not easily found elsewhere." -Peter Dollard, Mt. Pleasant, MI" Cocker, Mark & Richard Mabey (text) & Chris Gomersall (photogs.). Birds Britannica. Chatto & Windus, dist. by Trafalgar Square. Mar. 2006. 484p. photogs. bibliog. index. ISBN 0-7011-6907-9. $65. REF

Never mind its British accent, this charmingly eccentric book, a companion volume to "Flora Britannica" transcends mere national interest and captures, as the jacket blurb correctly claims, -the essence of why birds matter. - How this was achieved is remarkable: nature writers Cocker ("Birders: Tales of a Tribe" and Mabey ("Flora Britannica" not only assembled and interpreted pertinent scientific research but, more important, edited the responses of more than 1000 citizens eager to share their memories and observations relating to some 350 bird species. The result, eight years in the making, is a happy, seamless mixture of avian science and lore, formal literature and popular public response. There are 58 entries (corresponding to bird families) averaging three or four pages in length. The chapter on starlings is especially intriguing. While many bird books today are primarily concerned with identification, this work is neither a field volume nor a behavioral guide but rather a cultural history of humans and birds. Readers will be edified reading snippets from Chaucer, Shakespeare, and other luminaries. But there is poetry of a more homespun sort in the stories submitted by the public as well as in the vernacular names of the birds, which the authors have wisely included. The 400-plus color illustrations throughout are superlative. Bottom LineThis book -s -foreign - subject matter might make it, in some eyes, a marginal purchase, which is a pity -it would make a stellar addition to any large collection, and many readers will want to see its floral companion. For both reference and natural history collections." -Robert Eagan, Windsor P.L., Ont."

Copyright 2006 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

December 15, 2005
Black continues her peregrinations around Paris' most history-drenched neighborhoods (" Murder in Clichy," 2005) with this sixth in the series, this time set in Montmartre. Aimee Leduc, the intrepid computer-security analyst who can't keep her nose out of murder investigations, smells fresh blood after a childhood friend, now a policewoman, is accused of shooting her partner. Aimee doesn't buy it and takes to the streets and alleys of Montmartre in search of the real story. The trail leads to a group of Corsican separatists, aimed at achieving their political goals by any means necessary. As always, Black uses landscape for far more than window dressing, incorporating details of Montmartre history into the fabric of the plot and never missing an opportunity to connect, say, a Metro station named for a Communist Resistance fighter to the struggles of contemporary Corsicans. A common theme running throughout Black's consistently engaging series, in fact, is the frustration of various immigrant groups trying to live in and around Paris, a topic of ever more urgent concern.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2005, American Library Association.)