Murder in the Bastille

Rating:
Summary: Great characters and ambiance
Review: Black just keeps getting better and better, and "Murder in the Bastille" is her best Aimee Leduc mystery yet. Aimee's blindness has given her a depth that only comes throught trial and experience and Black has adroitly handled her heroine's inner growth. The independence that Aimee has shown in the previous books here takes on an edgy sadness that fills in her character and really brings her to life. Her partner, Rene, too, comes into his own in this 4th book of the series.

The plot of "Bastille" is smooth and the considerable action connects readily. As always, Paris itself is a character, and the dark dreams and gritty contemporary reality of the city are as rich and delicious as an espress on a rainy day. Escape to Paris as easily as opening the cover.

Rating:
Summary: booooooring
Review: lots of misdirection and confusion with no conclusion.
stock characters left undeveloped.
paris-o-philes might like the scenery.

Rating:
Summary: Leduc Est Formidable!
Review: Murder in the Bastille is my first Aimee Leduc mystery, but it won't be my last. Not only do the backstreet Paris scenes ring true, so do the complex relationships. Readers who bring a little something to the book themselves will enjoy it more than dullards who look for simplistic answers with every loose thread neatly snipped. Cara Black's in media res approach makes me want to go backwards and forwards in this intelligent series. Highly recommended.

Rating:
Summary: Embraceable Aimee
Review: Murder in the Bastille is the adventure that draws the reader to Aimee Leduc's side from the beginning. The story begins with Aimee in a restaurant. At a nearby table, she spots a woman who is wearing an identical Chinese silk top. When the woman leaves, Aimee notices that she has left behind her cell phone and goes after her to return it. Down a side street in pursuit of the woman, Aimee is violently attacked. When she comes to, she is blind. From here, readers, hone all your senses, and go with Aimee on this new journey to find the answers to this multi-faceted mystery. I particularly enjoyed "Bastille" because we get to see different dimensions of Aimee as a person, given her new vulnerabilities. Her condition also gives us a chance to view Rene in a broader light as his role becomes instrumental in putting all the pieces together. If you want someone to show you around Paris, with an attitude of free-spirit and freshness, jump into Aimee's pack and hang on tight. Cara Black, has proven to be, once again, a worthy and able tourguide through the Paris streets.

Rating:
Summary: Aimee Leduc Storms the Bastille
Review: This is my first Aimee Leduc novel, and I am happy to say that it came as a pleasant surprise. On my previous visit to Paris (in 1999), I was startled to see tough paratroopers armed with automatic rifles at the Chatelet-Les Halles metro station patrolling the platforms and corridors. Paris is no longer the city of Maurice Chevalier, or even Georges Simenon: What we have here is a rougher and edgier city with a compact tourist core surrounded by miles of slumlike banlieus along the edges.

Cara Black's flics barely have the time to deal with murder, when other events like terror-driven explosions and a horrible TGV accident in the station. Rumanian thugs in cheap exercise suits abound, selling their muscle to developers and with an eye on the main chance, whatever it may be. The Bastille area, site of a notorious castle/prison torn down in 1789, is now dominated by the huge Opera Bastille. The local neighborhood, however, is being forcibly torn down and redeveloped.

In walks private investigator Aimee Leduc. In the first few pages of MURDER IN THE BASTILLE, she is brutally attacked in an alley and blinded as a result of a damaged artery. For most of the novel, she can see nothing around her. The onus for the investigation falls on her dwarfish partner Rene, with occasional help en passant from overburdened police officers who knew her father on the force.

I look forward to reading the other novels in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Ever more fascinating
Review: With each Aimee Leduc novel, Cara Black gets better--ever more deft and graceful at storytelling and characterization, while still giving us the intensity of Paris. At the very start of this book, Aimee is attacked and blinded. The police suggest she was the victim of a serial killer. But was she? Aimee struggles to navigate in the world of the blind while considering several unfolding crimes. Among the wonderful things about this book is the emergence of her partner Rene from prop sidekick status--it is Rene who acts to uncover crucial evidence, and Black's portrait of him is powerful and poignant. The action takes place in a Paris that is not a tourist fantasy but a tough metropolis. As ever, no other writer today gives us Paris like this. Black remains that rarity--a marvelous storyteller who believes readers have a brain.