The Bones of Paris

Laurie King, author of the bestselling Mary Russell series, offers a new stand-alone, this one set on the vivid stage of Jazz-Age Paris. Narrator Jefferson Mays portrays Harris Stuyvesant, an American private investigator who is on the trail of a beautiful young American who's gone missing. Mays attempts a hard-boiled drawl but falls short overall with his workmanlike reading. He conveys an appropriate world-weary attitude but sounds too fresh and youthful to be as seasoned and cynical as King's suspenseful, well-researched prose demands. The detective uncovers an unsavory plot of sexual depravity linked to the modernist art world, and within it a devious serial murderer. A.W. © AudioFile 2014, Portland, Maine