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The bones of Paris : a novel of suspense / Laurie R. King.
Investigating the disappearance of an American girl who may be one of several abductees linked to a series of murders, Harris Stuyvesant, a former officer of the American Bureau of Investigation, follows clues to an American expat community in 1929 Paris, where he encounters dangerous adversaries and famous historical artists.
Record details
- ISBN: 9780345531766 (hardcover) :
- Physical Description: 412 pages ; 24 cm
- Edition: First edition.
- Publisher: New York : Bantam Books, 2013.
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| Subject: | Abduction > Fiction. Murder > Fiction. Missing persons > Fiction. Private investigators > Fiction. Theatres > Paris > France > Fiction. Paris (France) > Fiction. |
| Genre: | Suspense fiction. |
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Show Only Available Copies
| Location | Call Number / Copy Notes | Barcode | Shelving Location | Holdable? | Status | Due Date |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gibsons Public Library | FIC KING (Text) | 30886000532792 | Adult Mystery | Volume hold | Available | - |
| Sechelt Public Library | F KING (Text) | 33260000280447 | Fiction | Volume hold | Available | - |
- Booklist Reviews : Booklist Reviews 2013 September #1
*Starred Review* King takes a break from her popular Mary Russell series to return to the story of Harris Stuyvesant from Touchstone (2008). Formerly an FBI agent and now a dissolute PI, Harris is still haunted by the events in the earlier book, which left his lover, Sarah, maimed. Needing work, he accepts a missing-persons job that takes him to Paris in 1929 and offers the possibility of reuniting with Sarah. Fans of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris will feel right at home in the Jazz Age Paris setting, though many of the famous Lost Generation figures are portrayed in a much less flattering light here (artist Man Ray, in particular, is a misogynist and murder suspect). The story is complex, more than a little kinky, and absolutely fascinating. The missing girl Harris seeks turns out to be only one of many missing persons who came into the orbit of a group of offbeat Parisian artists whose credo demands that art be visceral. Could the infamous Moreau, who creates tableaux using human bones to suggest the corruption of the flesh, be somehow connected to the missing young people? Harris noses about through familiar Left Bank haunts, encountering the era's usual suspects (Hemingway, Sylvia Beach, Cole Porter, and Josephine Baker, among them), but beyond the cameos and the bohemian atmosphere, there is a compelling thriller here and some fascinating fictional characters to go with the real-life ones. As always with King, the plot is tricky but marvelously constructed, delivering twists that not only surprise but also deepen the story and its multiple levels of meaning. Break out that dusty bottle of absinthe you have stored away and settle in for a treat. HIGH-DEMAND BACKSTORY: King's Mary Russell novels are her biggest sellers, but Touchstone hit the extended New York Times list, and this follow-up has Paris and the Lost Generation going for it. And don't discount the web-savvy King, who does online promotion as well as any author out there. Copyright 2013 Booklist Reviews. - Kirkus Reviews : Kirkus Reviews 2013 August #2
The dark side of Jazz Age Paris. Harris Stuyvesant didn't think any more of Philippa Crosby than of most of the young women he bedded. Their five-day fling certainly wasn't long enough to count as an affair. So when Pip goes missing and her uncle Ernest, knowing of Stuyvesant's past experience with the FBI, asks him to find her, the man's in an awkward position. Already nagged with guilt over his failure to protect his former lover Sarah Grey from criminal horrors three years ago (Touchstone, 2008), he takes the case and proceeds to make inquiries, beginning with Pip's tearful Southern California roommate, Nancy Berger. In no time at all, Stuyvesant is up to his spats in period detail, celebrity walk-ons (Sylvia Beach, Bricktop, Cole Porter) and distinctly kinky intimations. Pip's acquaintance with artist/provocateur Man Ray, who photographed her in a highly suggestive pose, is only the tip of the iceberg. Sarah's boss, Comte Dominic de Charmentier, is intimately connected with the "death pornography" of the scandalous theatrical productions that made the Grand-Guignol a trademark for grotesquerie. King presents Stuyvesant's tour of the lower depths of the Parisian avant-garde in terms both decorous and creepy. By the time Sarah and her brother Bennett, a human lie detector who retired from working with Stuyvesant to a Dorset farm, return to his life, his suspicion that Pip's was only one of a long line of disappearances has made him a changed man who has to admit that "the odors of life are not always pleasant"--even in 1929 Paris. Evocative period detail and challenging aesthetic adventures compensate for a mystery more suggestive than believable and a climactic sequence that seems to have been lifted from King's last tale of Mary Russell and Sherlock Holmes (Garment of Shadows, 2012). Copyright Kirkus 2013 Kirkus/BPI Communications.All rights reserved. - LJ Express Reviews : LJ Express Reviews
King's latest book is both a chilling mystery and a haunting love letter to the Paris of Hemingway's Lost Generation, including Hemingway himself. In September 1929, Harris Stuyvesant, the American private investigator first introduced in Touchstone, explores the city's streets and alleys, cafés and bars, searching for a missing young woman from Boston who may be dead. He socializes with everyone who was anyone in Paris in that last glorious autumn before the stock market crash. Harris's only hope of catching a serial killer is the dutiful police detective who stole his ex-lover's heartâif the cop doesn't arrest him first. Verdict It takes the reader a significant investment of time to reach the conclusion that there has been an actual murder and even longer to figure out who the suspects are. Murder is beside the point here, with the novel offering instead a paean to Jazz Age Paris, which King clearly evokes. The reader walks those streets with Harris, rubbing elbows with Man Ray and Hemingway. Recommended for readers interested in historical fiction set in the era and literary mysteries. [Library marketing.]âMarlene Harris, Seattle P.L. (c) Copyright 2013. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted. - Publishers Weekly Reviews : PW Reviews 2013 July #3
Edgar-winner King delivers a sequel to 2008's Touchstone with this impressive mystery set in 1929 Paris. In the arresting preface, set in Cornwall, Bennett Grey receives a letter from Harris Stuyvesant, his friend but "a man whose motives Grey had reason to distrust," containing four photographs whose contents are so disturbing that the suicidal Grey burns them immediately. The action then shifts to Paris 10 days earlier, where Stuyvesant, a former FBI man who left on bad terms with Hoover, is trying to trace a missing 22-year-old American woman, Pip Crosby. To the investigator, Crosby is just "one in a string of mostly blonde, mostly young women" who shared his bed, adding a patina of guilt to his inquiries. The trail leads him to a tantalizing mystery involving the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol and artists who use human bones to create their work.Readers will hope to see more of Grey, who is absent for most of this story, and Stuyvesant in future books. Agent: Linda Allen, Linda Allen Literary Agency. (Sept.)
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