Paris Requiem

Rating:
Summary: Paris Requiem
Review: Beautifully written, suspensful, colorfully describes Paris in 1899, its political climate and the treatment of different classes of people, especially women and immigrants. Surprising ending! Highly recommended. (One her other novels "The Dead of Winter" is also excllent, the writing style being somewhat different.) The author knows how to cleverly reel you into a world of intrigue surrounding the lives of fascinating people.

Rating:
Summary: Just OK.
Review: The premise of this story is intriguing. James Norton, a young attorney from Boston has been sent by his domineering mother to Paris, where his newsman brother and ailing sister are living as ex-pats and he is to make them return home. James's brother is deep in grief over the recent, violent death of his fiancee, an actress from a Jewish immigrant family. The plot delves into illicit medical research, racial prejudice, dysfunctional family relationships, and investigative journalism, and its depiction of turn of the century Paris is fascinating. The characters, however, are strangely flat, and I never really grew to care about any of them. It was also easy to solve the crime by the midpoint of the book. Worth a look, but certainly not "gripping", "lavish", or "chilling", as promised on the cover notes.

Rating:
Summary: Just OK.
Review: The premise of this story is intriguing. James Norton, a young attorney from Boston has been sent by his domineering mother to Paris, where his newsman brother and ailing sister are living as ex-pats and he is to make them return home. James's brother is deep in grief over the recent, violent death of his fiancee, an actress from a Jewish immigrant family. The plot delves into illicit medical research, racial prejudice, dysfunctional family relationships, and investigative journalism, and its depiction of turn of the century Paris is fascinating. The characters, however, are strangely flat, and I never really grew to care about any of them. It was also easy to solve the crime by the midpoint of the book. Worth a look, but certainly not "gripping", "lavish", or "chilling", as promised on the cover notes.