Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light by David Downie

Title: Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light by David Downie
Published April 5, 2011; Broadway paperback
Genre: travel
Photographs by Alison Harris

Paris is only one of the cities called the "City of Light." It was given this name because it was the first European city that lit up its streets with gaslights. Other cities with the title include Miami, Florida; Anchorage, Alaska and Los Angeles, Ca., given for different reasons. The oldest city known as the City of Light is Varanasi (known as Benares) in India, the place where light first entered earth, according to Hindu belief.

For those traveling to Paris, Paris, Paris is the most complete and detailed description and history of Paris that I have seen. With lots of interesting tidbits and historical facts, it also has the advantage that it can be read in sections.

Here is the book/publisher description:
"Swapping his native San Francisco for the City of Light, travel writer David Downie arrived in Paris in 1986 on a one-way ticket, his head full of romantic notions. Curiosity and the legs of a cross-country runner propelled him daily from an unheated, seventh-floor walk-up garret near the Champs-Elysées to the old Montmartre haunts of the doomed painter Modigliani, the tombs of Père-Lachaise cemetery, the luxuriant alleys of the Luxembourg Gardens and the aristocratic Île Saint-Louis midstream in the Seine. 

Downie wound up living in the chic Marais district, married to the Paris-born American photographer Alison Harris, an equally incurable walker and chronicler. Ten books and a quarter-century later, he still spends several hours every day rambling through Paris, and writing about the city he loves. 

 An irreverent, witty romp featuring thirty-one short prose sketches of people, places and daily life, Paris, Paris: Journey into the City of Light ranges from the glamorous to the least-known corners and characters of the world’s favorite city."

I hope to make it back someday to Paris, which I visited after college during a short ramble through Europe. I'd be sure to read this book first, though, to get the most out of the trip.

Thanks to the author for a complimentary copy of this book. 

Book Review: Murder in the Palais Royal by Cara Black

 

"Who the hell shot Rene, and why does everyone think it's me?" She tried to slow down, control the rising panic in her voice. "I want to give my statement and move on to more important things. Like finding who did this." (p. 21)

Aimee Leduc is accused of shooting her business partner, Rene, who is undergoing surgery in a Paris hospital. She tracks down possible suspects who might want to frame her and harm her friend and partner in the business.

From Goodreads: Eyewitnesses have identified Aimée as the culprit. A mysterious deposit has been made to their firm's bank account, interesting the taxman in their affairs. Someone seems to be impersonating Aimée; someone wants revenge. Two murders ensue. How do they relate to the youth whom Aimée's testimony sent to jail in the very first Aimée Leduc investigation, Murder in the Marais ?

My comments:
I like the free-spirited heroine of the series, her flair for fashion, her doggedness in tracking down clues in a mystery, and her faithfulness to her friends. She is especially good at getting the right information from reluctant witnesses or even unreliable sources. And she is one of the best guides to Paris there is.

In previous books, she has taken us into the catacombs underneath the city of Paris, into the various arrondissements of Paris, the neighborhoods full of history which author Cara Black has imbued with mystery in her ten novels. In Murder in the Palais Royale, Aimee ventures into the underground tunnels in the arrondissement, adding to the intrigue and suspense of the plot, and giving us more of the flavor and past of Paris.

I recommend reading the first and best novel in the series, Murder in the Marais, along with this latest book, as the people and plots are linked, though they are both excellent as stand-alone reads. I'm looking forward to more in the series, too. Each of her books is set in a different neighborhood of Paris. There are 20 arrondissements in the city and she her books are set in 10 of them!

Cara Black is the author of nine previous books in the best-selling Aimée Leduc mystery series. She has been nominated twice for an Anthony Award. She lives in San Francisco with her husband and son and visits Paris frequently.(Goodreads)

Soho Press, Inc. provided a copy of this book for my objective review.

Challenges: Thriller & Suspense Reading Challenge, 100 + Reading Challenge

 

Book Review: Trail of Crumbs, a Memoir by Kim Sunee

Trail of Crumbs: Hunger, Love, and the Search for Home by Kim Sunée
Genre: memoir
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

Trail of Crumbs is the memoir of a young woman haunted by memories of being lost or abandoned by her mother at age three in a Korean markeplace. Persistent nightmares and her longing for "Omma" to come back to claim her in that marketplace suggest an unfulfilling childhood in the U.S. with her adoptive family. Her adoptive mother she describes as distant and disapproving. Her happy memories in the U.S. are of her adoptive grandfather, who taught her about New Orleans food and cooking.

The book is partly about travel - Provence and Paris, France - and partly a memoir of the author's love affair with Europe, European food, and European men - very different from the "narrow" and circumscribed life in New Orleans. Kim Sunee escapes to college in France and stays to live in Europe for many years with her French lover Olivier and his young daughter. When she doesn't find fulfillment in this either, Sunee finally tries psychotherapy in France, where a psychiatrist tells her the problem - she is divided.

A quick trip to Asia, suggested by Olivier, doesn't do anything to heal this divide. Korea is unsatisfactory, and she becomes sick on a trip to China. She finally accepts herself and her life while spending time in French Guiana - a simpler place than any she has ever lived in.

Those interested in memoirs, adoption and adopted children, French food and recipes, and Provence, will enjoy the book - the personal journey of a Korean American woman and food writer seeking to find out where she belongs.

Kim Sunee is "founding food editor for Cottage Living and the host of 'Local Flavor with Kim Sunee' for MyRecipes.com." Her website is www.KimSunee.com

Thanks to the Hachette Book Group for the review copy of this book.

Book Review: Paris City of Night by David Downie

Paris City of Night by David Downie


My rating: 3.75 of 5 stars

Paris is known as the City of Lights but in this novel of suspense, Paris City of Night, journalist and travel writer David Downie shows us a seamier and more sinister side of the famous city where he lives and writes.

There are police everywhere in the city because of the constant threat of terrorism, many of the buildings are old, dusty, and fragile, and the troubling past is ever present.

Plot: The novel begins with an image of the past, 1950, with George Henri in a photography darkroom working to develop a picture of a man with round glasses in a raincoat and panama hat, leaning on the deck of a ship. We find out the man is Adolf Eichmann leaving France by boat for Buenos Aires.

Shift to Paris in 2007 and the image of an old woman in her 90s, having delusions, nightmares, and reliving the past fitfully. We find out she is Madeleine de Lafayette, a Resistance fighter in her youth during the war, and "a key player in the misguided Allied effort to fight Communism by smuggling Nazis to freedom." ( publisher's description).

Her protege, photographer Jay Grant returns from a trip and finds Madeleine has died and an item in her photo collection sold at auction. A daguerreotype he had made some years back was sold for an outrageous price, given it was a forgery. Frantic to recover it and others, to keep out of jail, Jay goes about tracing the unknown seller of the item. This begins a long and strange journey where his life is often in danger, several people are murdered, and secrets are revealed about his father "the spook", about Madeleine, and about the use of daguerreotypes to send encrypted messages during the war.

Comments: The plot is complex, changes direction midstream, and takes you to a different ending than the one you imagined. I would have preferred less detail about the history of photography, encryption, and daguerreotype. For a mystery novel, the amount of information was a bit overwhelming and I was sometimes impatient for the story to move from one scene to another.

Overall though, the book has a very good plot with a lot of fast action, chase scenes, and twists in the plot. There are excellent characterizations and descriptions of time and place to create a background atmosphere. In other words, I came away with a good sense of Paris as the City of Night.

Book received from the author for review.

Book Review: Bon Appetit, by Sandra Byrd

Bon Appetit: A Novel by Sandra Byrd


Bon Appetit reads like a memoir but is a light and entertaining work of fiction about an aspiring chef from Seattle who travels to France to work in bread and pastry bakeries in the village of Presque le Chateau.

Throw in some recipes, descriptions of trips to Paris and Versailles, a budding love affair that could turn into a love triangle, and you have a Bon Appetit of a book!

I copied the recipes for French Onion Soup and Simple Apple Galettes and promised myself to try them. There is also a tempting recipe for Chocolate Truffles which sounds very easy to whip up!

Bon Appetit is the second in a series of three novels with chef Lexi Stuart. The first, Let Them Eat Cake, is set in Seattle, and the third, also in Seattle, will continue the saga of Lexi's development as a bread and pastry chef and probably settle the question, "Which one of her suitors will she choose?"

This is also the first "religious" novel I've ever read. The main character prays when she is in a dilemma and relies on quotations from the Bible to carry her through the ups and down of her culinary experience. Interestingly, this didn't bother me as the novel was not overly spiritual, nor preachy.

Book Review: Murder in the Latin Quarter by Cara Black

The best thing about reading the mystery novel, Murder in the Latin Quarter, was Paris itself, the old Paris that author Cara Black is so fond of describing. This time she takes us into the catacombs and tunnels underneath Paris, and also to the Latin Quarter with its history of philosophers, its students, and its new immigrants.

The Haitian community of Paris in 1997 are a mixed group. Some of them are still tied to the Haitian dictatorship under Papa Doc Duvalier. Some work for international organizations such as the World Bank.

Background: a renowned Haitian scientist is killed in Paris after discovering high levels of lead in the liver of Haitian pigs, possibly caused by the water supply on Haitian farms. Coincidentally, a water supply company in Haiti is in Paris petitioning the World Bank for funds.

The plot develops when Aimee Leduc is drawn into the mystery after a Haitian woman comes to her office, Leduc Detective, begging for help, fleeing from an unknown danger, and claiming to be Aimee's half-sister. The woman, Mireille, takes fright, leaves the office suddenly, and disappears into the illegal immigrant underground.

Aimee is desperate to find out more about her half-sister. She finds out that Mireille used to work in the Paris lab of the murdered Haitian scientist and is a suspect in the case. Aimee wants to prove her sister innocent and scours the Left Bank, the Latin Quarter, and underground Paris to find her.

The book gives us a strong sense of the city as well as the old underground Paris, now used by students in the Latin Quarter. Medical students from the Sorbonne hold regular parties in the catacombs; others show films there.

They call themselves cataphiles. Cataphiles hang out in the underground, light their way with catalamps, and avoid the cataflics, Parisian police in blue uniforms who patrol the catacombs.

Comments: Detailed description of location, names of streets, and directions, which I think only a Parisian can follow or would want to follow. The plot is a bit far-fetched, as are some of the characters. Focused as it is on one set of people, I was left wondering how the Haitian community actually fits (or doesn't fit) into the larger Parisian community.

But Paris is the main character. And she is always fascinating!

Besides Murder in the Marais, one of my favorites in the series, which I reviewed, is Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (An Aimee Leduc Investigation)

Book Review: Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis by Cara Black

Cara Black's mystery novels are each set in a different neighborhood of Paris. Her most recent in the series is Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis (2007).The main character in the series, Aimee Leduc, owns a detective agency with her business partner, Rene, a four-foot dwarf who is a computer whiz. They work mainly in computer security and together they provide systems administration, systems management, and computer security to businesses, government agencies, and whoever else can help pay their bills.

In the novels, Aimee gets caught up in the lives of the Parisians in the different quarters of the city - the young and the old, immigrants and long time residents, people who remember the war and the lives changed by the war. As she solves crime after crime in the city, she also uncovers old secrets and ghosts, stories of guilt and grief, love and hope. Paris is steeped in history and its old buildings, even the underground sewers and tunnels, the river Seine, the cobbled streets all work their way into her interesting and original plots.

I've read all the books in the series and have listed them all below as I was impressed with the story line, the characters, and the novels' strong sense of place.

(Did I forget to mention that the main character has a bichon frise like mine? Aimee's dog is named Miles Davis, after the jazz musician. Mine is called Harvey though my sons named him Double-Oh-Seven James Bichon.)

Cara Black lives in San Francisco but travels often to Paris. and is working on her next Aimee Leduc mystery, which is probably also set in Paris. The title of each of her previous novels indicate the area of the city in which her plot is centered: Murder in Montmartre (2006), Murder in Clichy, Murder in the Bastille, Murder in the Sentier (nominated for the Anthony Award, 2003), Murder in Belleville, and her first, Murder in the Marais (1999).

Here's an interview with Cara Black done by crime writer, Peter Lovesey, for mystery readers.org's At Home Online. See http://www.mysteryreaders.org/athomeblack.html

Cara Black in turn interviews Shanghai native and mystery writer, Qiu Xiaolong, author of the Chief Inspector Chen Cao series, Death of a Red Heroine and A Loyal Characer Dancer. See http://www.mysteryreaders.org/athomeqiu.html