Description
NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY THE SACRAMENTO BEENew York Times bestselling author Laurie R. King, beloved for her acclaimed Mary Russell/Sherlock Holmes series, consistently writes richly detailed and thoroughly suspenseful novels that bring a distant time and place to brilliant life. Now, in this thrilling new book, King leads readers into the vibrant and sensual Paris of the Jazz Age and reveals the darkest secrets of its denizens.
Paris, France: September 1929. For Harris Stuyvesant, the assignment is a private investigator's dream he's getting paid to troll the cafรฉs and bars of Montparnasse, looking for a pretty young woman. The American agent has a healthy appreciation for la vie de bohรจme, despite having worked for years at the U.S. Bureau of Investigation. The missing person in question is Philippa Crosby, a twenty-two year old from Boston who has been living in Paris, modeling and acting. Her family became alarmed when she stopped all communications, and Stuyvesant agreed to track her down. He wholly expects to find her in the arms of some up-and-coming artist, perhaps experimenting with the decadent lifestyle that is suddenly available on every rue and boulevard.
As Stuyvesant follows Philippa's trail through the expatriate community of artists and writers, he finds that she is known to many of its famous and infamous inhabitants, from Shakespeare and Company's Sylvia Beach to Ernest Hemingway to the Surrealist photographer Man Ray. But when the evidence leads Stuyvesant to the Thรฉ'tre du Grand-Guignol in Montmartre, his investigation takes a sharp, disturbing turn. At the Grand-Guignol, murder, insanity, and sexual perversion are all staged to shocking, brutal effect: depravity as art, savage human nature on stage.
Soon it becomes clear that one missing girl is a drop in the bucket. Here, amid the glittering lights of the cabarets, hides a monster whose artistic coup de gr'ce is to be rendered in blood. And Stuyvesant will have to descend into the darkest depths of perversion to find a killer . . . sifting through The Bones of Paris.
Praise for The Bones of Paris
Fans of Woody Allen's Midnight in Paris will feel right at home in the Jazz Age Paris setting. . . . 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.Booklist (starred review)
Impressive . . . arresting . . . a tantalizing mystery involving the Thรฉ'tre du Grand-Guignol and artists who use human bones to create their work. Readers will hope to see more of Grey . . . and Stuyvesant in future books.Publishers Weekly
The dark side of Jazz Age Paris . . . evocative period detail and challenging aesthetic adventures . . . King presents Stuyvesant's tour of the lower depths of the Parisian avant-garde in terms both decorous and creepy.Kirkus Reviews
From the Hardcover edition. ISBN:9780345531780
