The Paris Directive

April 9, 2012
Set in 1999 and lightly cloaked in thriller garb, the pseudonymous Jay’s entertaining first novel pays homage to George Simenon and his legendary detective, Inspector Maigret. When the young wife of Paris policeman Inspector Mazarelle falls terminally ill, the couple relocate to the village of Taziac in the Dordogne region of southwest France, where hired assassin Klaus Reiner happens to be on the prowl. Soon Mazarelle is investigating the slaughter of four American tourists in the farmhouse where they were staying, a crime loosely connected to the real-life accidental NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Never mind the international intrigue. The main draw is the charming, indomitable Inspector Mazarelle, who enjoys puffing on his old pipe, stopping for cognac in the middle of the day, and dining on sausages and lentils or his favorite dish, duck confit, at the Café Valon. Mystery fans will look forward to seeing more of him in the promised sequel. Agent: Georges Borchardt, Georges Borchardt Inc.

June 1, 2012
Pseudonymous Jay's debut plops a killer-for-hire down in the placid Dordogne village of Taziac to produce a mashup of cloak-and-dagger and cozy replete with murder and fine dining. A cleaning lady shows up at L'Ermitage to find vacation renter Ben Reece, a New York art dealer, gruesomely slain. A further search of the villa discloses the equally dead bodies of Reece's wife and the wife of his old friend Schuyler Phillips. The local flics assume that the killer is the absent Monsieur Phillips. Once they find his corpse too, they redirect their suspicions to handyman Ali Sedak. All of which proves that these cops are idiots, because readers already know that two retired French intelligence agents who still have a stake in the game have dispatched Klaus Reiner, a freelance assassin of many names, to Taziac on a murderous mission. Even after the hapless cops ask that Inspector Paul Mazarelle, a local celebrity, be assigned to the case, things are slow to improve for the forces of law and order. Mazarelle's first move is to arrest Ali Sedak, even though he suspects that the evidence against him is a little too suspiciously generous. It's not until Ali's death in his cell that the wheels of justice start moving in the right direction. By that time the Reeces' daughter Molly, a Manhattan assistant district attorney, has arrived on the scene to be wined and dined and menaced by the suave Reiner in his improbable guise as Pierre Barmeyer. By-the-numbers plotting, with a killer whose motivations make you wonder how he's lasted so long; a police hero who's bound to return in further installments; and some meals you'll remember long after the 10 fatalities have faded from memory.

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Starred review from May 1, 2012
Paris police Inspecteur Paul Mazarelle transferred to the sleepy Dordogne when his wife decided to return to the village of her birth to spend her final days. A year after her death, he's lonely and unfulfilled by rural life and policing. But the brutal murders of two American couples put a spring in his step. What he doesn't know is that the murders were a professional hit commissioned at the highest levels of French government. The pseudonymous Jay has woven threads of police procedural, espionage, rural noir, acts of barbarism, and Gallic charm into a story that will be a great fit for almost any crime fan. Mazarelle is a memorable flichulking, disheveled, intuitive, and world-weary. The hitman is an East German who has ardently embraced capitalism and conspicuous consumption (the book is set in 1999). The American daughter of two of the victims arrives to ask some pointed questions, and she is strikingly attractive, smart, and very direct; and the natives of the Dordogne are engagingly and quirkily French. This is the start of a series, and the only disappointing note is that, upon dispatching the killer, Mazarelle returns to Paris. It's likely that many readers would love to spend more time in Jay's Dordogne.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2012, American Library Association.)