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A review by bookadventurer
Murder in the Marais by Cara Black
2.0
Aimee Leduc is a private detective in 1990s Paris, who focuses on computer crimes. Which is really interesting in the 1990s, isn't it? Did they have computers back then? Ha. Certainly not ubiquitous internet. Back to the story: even though she and her father used to work on missing persons cases for Holocaust victims and survivors, she stopped doing that after a personal tragedy. However, when Soli Hecht walks into her office and asks her to investigate something completely off the books, she returns to her roots - and ends up in hot water, to mix metaphors.
It took me a few tries to get into this book, because it starts slowly and I was trying to listen on audiobook. When I found it secondhand at a bookstore, I picked it up - and found it much easier to get through. I did find the scatterings of French phrases to be a bit over the top - such as "red wine" which is used repeatedly. The mystery is more dangerous than I expected, and it's quite involved. I had trouble sometimes keeping up with the different threads, there are so many. There's a troublesome romantic liaison at one point - Leduc gets into bed with someone she thinks is a neo-Nazi. After my initial disgusted reaction, I assumed that of course, he wasn't *really* a neo-Nazi. Paris makes a prominent secondary character - the sense of place and time seems solid to me (and very front-and-center), though I've never been to Paris and speak without any knowledge of it. The portrayal of Leduc's assistant, Rene, who is a little person, doesn't stand up to the passage of time and suffers from the book's being published in the late 1990s.
Side note: I'm trying to imagine the world of 1990s computing, because it's vastly different from our own. It added to the ambience, to be sure - but I'm also sure I'm making some of it up. When will books start printing images of computers and networks that don't exist anymore for the young kids these days who are growing up with microscopic computers and 5G everywhere? Is there a Dictionary of Obsolete Technology?
It took me a few tries to get into this book, because it starts slowly and I was trying to listen on audiobook. When I found it secondhand at a bookstore, I picked it up - and found it much easier to get through. I did find the scatterings of French phrases to be a bit over the top - such as "red wine" which is used repeatedly. The mystery is more dangerous than I expected, and it's quite involved. I had trouble sometimes keeping up with the different threads, there are so many. There's a troublesome romantic liaison at one point - Leduc gets into bed with someone she thinks is a neo-Nazi. After my initial disgusted reaction, I assumed that of course, he wasn't *really* a neo-Nazi. Paris makes a prominent secondary character - the sense of place and time seems solid to me (and very front-and-center), though I've never been to Paris and speak without any knowledge of it. The portrayal of Leduc's assistant, Rene, who is a little person, doesn't stand up to the passage of time and suffers from the book's being published in the late 1990s.
Side note: I'm trying to imagine the world of 1990s computing, because it's vastly different from our own. It added to the ambience, to be sure - but I'm also sure I'm making some of it up. When will books start printing images of computers and networks that don't exist anymore for the young kids these days who are growing up with microscopic computers and 5G everywhere? Is there a Dictionary of Obsolete Technology?