The Book Artist by Mark Pryor

The Book Artist by Mark Pryor --- 269 pages including a map and Acknowledgements. Book 8 in the Hugo Marston Series.

Hugo Marston, former FBI profiler and currently head of security for the U.S. Embassy in Paris, finds himself the target of a vengeful killer while investigating the murder of an up-and-coming young American artist holding her first international show at the Dalí Museum in Montmartre.

The French detective in charge of the case is not fluent in English, and since all of the prime suspects are American, Hugo offers his assistance in interviewing the witnesses and potential suspects. Unfortunately, Lieutenant Intern Marchand seizes on a single piece of evidence to build a case against Marston's close friend Claudia Roux, who happened quite by accident to be on the scene just after the murder was discovered. Now Hugo has a personal reason to remain involved in the investigation and clear Claudia.

While this is playing out in Paris, Hugo's best friend, former CIA spook Tom Green, is in  Amsterdam, following the trail of Rick Cofer, a killer recently released from prison in Texas, and carrying an old grudge against Tom and Hugo.

With Claudia under arrest, a murder to solve, and Tom in danger, Hugo knows he needs to find answers fast before one killer gets away, while another gets too close for comfort.

Mark Pryor is the author of the Hugo Marston novels, The Bookseller, The Crypt Thief, The Blood Promise, The Button Man, The Reluctant Matador, The Paris Librarian, and The Sorbonne Affair. Most of his books take place in Paris, the city he loves and knows best in the world. A native of England, Pryor immigrated to Chapel Hill NC in 1994, where his American mother's relatives lived. He went back to school and eventually earned a law degree from Duke University. After graduating he moved to Dallas TX to practice law. In 2006 he took a job as an Assistant Prosecutor in the Travis County TX District Attorney's Office, where he continues to work today.  He lives with his wife and children in Austin TX.

Click HERE to read a profile of Pryor from the Houstonia Magazine.

Click HERE to read a review of The Book Artist from Publishers Weekly.

Click HERE to read a review from Book People.

Click HERE to read an interview with Pryor about The Book Artist from thebigthrill.org.   

The Paris Winter by Imogen Robertson

The Paris Winter: A Novel by Imogen Robertson --- 360 pages including historical notes

With a background in film and television before she turned to writing, Imogen Robertson is the well-established author of a historical mystery series set in Georgian England featuring Harriet Westerman and Gabriel Crowther.

The Paris Winter is her first "stand alone" novel, but it is also has a historical setting. Devious doings and a dark revenge figure largely in this suspenseful tale set amid the artistic and social ferment of Belle Epoque Paris and the 1910 winter flood that devastated that city.

Inspired by family documents that revealed how her own grandmother and other young English women traveled, studied and worked abroad in the years leading up to the First World War, Robertson continued her usual meticulous research into the period so that her characters' lives continually intersect with real people and events. I particularly enjoyed the strong female characters who do not passively wait to be rescued, but band together to pursue the lives and happiness they desire.

Click HERE to read Imogen Robertson's description of writing The Paris Winter.

Click HERE and HERE to read reviews of The Paris Winter
     

The Long Way Home by Louise Penny

The Long Way Home: A Chief Inspector Gamache Novel by Louise Penny --- 373 pages

I stumbled onto Louis Perry's Chief Inspector Gamache series just a few years ago and I was hooked from the start. She writes murder mysteries, but she turns them into meditations on the human condition, and the nature of good and evil, and whether the soul can survive the slings and arrows of misfortune.

This tenth book in the series is very interesting. The complex story arc of the previous nine novels culminated with a shattering intensity in last year's How The Light Gets In, which may well be Penny's masterpiece. Now, in The Long Way Home, Armand Gamache and those he cares about are trying to pick up the pieces and remake their lives. Gamache is still coming to terms with all that has happened, and feeling his way into his new life of retirement in the village of Three Pines, when fate and a friend in desperate need force him back out into the world in search of a man with a sin-sick soul, on a journey to a desolate land at the edge of the world, a journey that will end in damnation or redemption.

Fans of  P.D. James, Colin Dexter, James Lee Burke or Donna Leon may enjoy Louise Penny.

Click HERE and HERE to read two excellent reviews of The Long Way Home.