Cara Black: Author, Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis

 

Cara Black, author of the bestselling mystery series featuring Paris investigator Amiée Leduc, will be at Bloomsbury Books in Ashland on Saturday April 7, 2007.  At 7:30 pm she will read from her latest book, Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis, just released in March 2007 by Soho Crime. The event is free and open to the public.

  

Cara Black's latest mystery is the seventh Amiée Leduc novel. Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis finds Amiée caring for an infant left by a student running from an assassin. Publishers Weekly starred review says, “This Paris has a gritty, edgy feel, and Black’s prose evokes the sound of the Seine rising with the spring thaw. Amiée makes an engaging protagonist, vulnerable beneath her vintage chic clothing and sharp-witted exterior."

 

At Saturday’s book talk, Black will reveal how she uncovered her alter-ego, crime investigator Aimee Leduc, and how she solves murders that never happened. Cara will tell of places she visited that most Americans would never see: the Pont des Arts at midnight, on duty with cops in a dispatch room in police headquarters monitoring radio calls, a visit to the unmarked Ministry building across from the Elysee Palace, a dingy, winding staircase of a 17th century building on rue des Rosiers.

 

”The trendy byways of Paris belong to Aimée Leduc, the clever young sleuth in a winning series by Cara Black, an American with an uncanny feel for the street culture of old Parisian neighborhoods,” raves Marilyn Stasio in a recent New York Times Book Review.

 

Black's Paris is romantic and picturesque, and yes, a dead body creates a certain amount of suspense in the beginning of each of Cara's mysteries.  If you know Paris, you'll feel right at home in Black's novels because each are set in one of Paris' best known neighborhoods -- Cliche, Montmartre, Marais, Belleville, Sentier. Plotting is tight and the mysteries are well written. Each mystery concerns the particular and peculiar history of that neighborhood and you won't put the mystery down until the twists and turns are resolved and history is revealed. At once sultry and seedy, Cara Black’s Paris comes to life in the streets and bistros.

 

Readers will want to visit Cara Black's website, where they’ll find the back stories of her mysteries and a rich source of information about Paris. There's a very hip and contemporary guide to Paris, "The City of Light", maps of the neighborhoods she writes about, and a selection of her photography that evoke Paris as you wish you knew it.

 

Cara Black's visit to Southern Oregon is sponsored by the Ashland Mystery Readers Group and the Friends of the Ashland Public Library.  For more information about mystery in Southern Oregon call Maureen Flanagan at 541-552-0743, email maureen@booksandoldlace.com or visit the Ashland Mystery Readers Group website at www.booksandoldlace.com.