Murder on the Champ de Mars

January 26, 2015
Family matters dominate bestseller Black’s absorbing 15th Aimée Leduc investigation (after 2014’s Murder in Pigalle). The baptism party of Aimée’s six-month-old baby, Chloé, is complicated by the arrival of the baby’s biological father, Melac, and by Nicu, an anguished Gypsy boy. Melac and his new wife want to share custody of Chloé. Nicu insists that his dying mother, an old family acquaintance and informant of Aimée’s late father, who ran the detective agency she inherited, has information to share about Aimée’s father’s unsolved murder a decade earlier. Classic spy scenes with an old-fashioned feel—meetings with dramatic figures in the back of cafés, trailing suspicious characters at fashionable parties—brush up against Aimée’s angst at managing life as a working single mother, while modern behavioral sensibilities and high-level politics butt heads with Gypsy traditions. Black imbues Aimée’s personal story with an exotic charm that feels more intimate than foreign. Agent: Katherine Fausset, Curtis Brown.

Starred review from January 15, 2015
Aimee Leduc (Murder in Pigalle, 2014, etc.) puts everything on the line to solve her most vexing cold case-the murder of her father.In France as elsewhere, the Roma live by their own rules, forging alliances and settling disputes within their own clans. So when Nicolas Constantin, a manouche teenager, approaches Aimee, she can hardly believe what he asks of her: to come to Hopital Laennec on the Left Bank so his dying mother can make peace before passing. Convinced that Drina Constantin's deathbed confession will shed light on the explosion in Place Vendome that killed her detective father, Aimee leaves her infant daughter, Chloe, with child minder Babette and hurries over to the chic 7th arrondissement, only to find that Drina has disappeared. Aimee is torn. She wants to be a good parent, especially now that the child's father, Melac, and his new wife, Donatine, have shown their determination to challenge her for custody. But to be the parent Chloe needs, Aimee needs to understand her own parents. What did her father know that made someone want to get him out of the way? And was his death connected to the disappearance of her mother years earlier? Aimee's search for answers takes her to the chic homes of haute bourgeoisie like Madame Uzes, who pinches her pennies while running missions for the gens du voyage; meanwhile, Aimee's partner, Rene, haunts dives like La Bouteille aux Puces, where Madame Bercou knows somebody who knows somebody who might know Drina. But it isn't until she finds Roland Leseur, an official at the Quai d'Orsay, whose younger brother Pascal, before his presumed suicide, was the youngest deputy in the Assemblee Nationale, that Aimee gets an inkling of the lofty heights her case will reach. Aimee's 15th outing is a killer, with all the suspense, all the surprise and all the Parisian flavor you'd expect from Black.

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February 15, 2015
Change is the operative word in the fifteenth installment of Black's wildly popular, Paris-set Aimee Leduc series. The bump that appeared on Aimee s normally svelte physique is now a full-fledged baby, Chloe, and Aimee's relationship with la bebe's father has gone from hot to cold to hostile, for he has married on the rebound and is now looking to get custody of the child. Into all this domestic turmoil comes a young gypsy boy with a yellowing note from Aimee's murdered father offering help to the boy's family. Will Aimee visit the boy's mother in the hospital before she dies? Yes, she will, but by the time she and the boy, Nicu, arrive, the woman has disappeared. So begins our heroine's latest gallop around Paris as she struggles to avoid the mysterious factions who seem intent on killing anyone who can help her unravel the many mysteries of her past. Black once again delivers what her readers crave: high-speed Parisian peregrinations, chic suspense, a touch of humor, and the indomitable Aimee, as unstoppable with a baby strapped to her hip as she was with one growing in her belly. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: The popularity of Black's series, especially in libraries, has grown steadily over the years, with Aimee and company finally assuming a perch they are not likely to surrender on most bestseller lists.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2015, American Library Association.)

October 1, 2014

Sassy, openhearted Aimee Leduc is back for a 15th outing that takes readers to Paris's elegant, old-gold seventh arrondissement. It's not all luxe, though; even as Aimee balances work-life responsibilities as a new mom with a detective agency to run, she helps a poor Gypsy boy whose dangerously ill mother has a secret to share. The last two Aimee Leduc works broke onto the best sellers lists; don't miss.

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