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Type of bind: Paperback
Dewey Decimal Number: 813.54
EAN num: 9781569474112
ISBN number: 1569474117
Label: Soho Crime
Manufacturer: Soho Crime
Quantity: 1
Page Count: 320
Printing Date: March 01, 2006
Publishing house: Soho Crime
Sale Popularity Level: 193497
Studio: Soho Crime
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Editor's Notes and Comments:
Product Description:
Praise for the Aimée Leduc series:
“The buzz . . . is partly about her heroine’s hip, next-generation, cutting-edge investigations and partly about Paris, a setting of unrivaled charm.”—Houston Chronicle
“If the cobblestones could talk, they might tell a tale as haunting as the one Cara Black spins.” —The New York Times Book Review
“Will have readers on pins and needles.”—San Francisco Chronicle
“One of the best new writers in the field today.”—Publishing houses Weekly (starred review)
“Conveys vividly those layers of history that make the stones of Paris sing for so many of us.”—Chicago Tribune
“With its sights, sounds, and colorful past, it’s a particularly eventful and involving Paris visit.”—Los Angeles Times
Spirited Aimée Leduc, a private investigator based in Paris, has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple by her partner, René, who urges her to learn to meditate as a counterbalance to her frenetic lifestyle. A Vietnamese nun asks her for a favor—to hand over a check and bring a package back to the temple. But this act of kindness ends in a stranger’s death and leaves her with a bullet wound in the arm, a check for 50,000 francs and a trove of ancient jade artifacts whose provenance is a mystery.
The French secret service, a group of veterans of the war in Indochina, some wealthy ex-colonials, and contending international oil companies all claim the jade. They will stop at nothing to gain possession of it. And the nun has disappeared.
Aimée has promised to avoid danger, but it continues to seek her out.
For more information, visit www.carablack.com
User popularity level:
Rated by buyers 
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This is the best in the Aimee Leduc series I've read yet! Not only does Cara Black show you Paris, she shows that it's not all the Louvre and the Champs-Elysees. She takes you where the tourists seldom go, to the arrondissements that the guidebooks never even mention. She shows you Paris from all sides, the Jewish, Muslim, North African, and Asian sides. She shows what it's like for former French colonials who returned, and former colonial subjects that relocated to France. In this book, she explores the Vietnamese community in Paris and seems to have done a lot of research. Most of us know something about the U.S. involvement in Vietnam, but not much is said about what went on before that. This book at least opens the door to the history of that country and France's involvement as a colonial power. It makes you want to read further. She also explores other items of interest, such as the French legal system, the art world, the symbolic properties of jade in East Asian cultures, and the area of Clichy itself, which is not even listed in the index of the DK Eyewitness Guide. If you really want to get to know Paris, this is a good place to start. The one thing I dont understand is that she always sets her books in the early 1990s rather than the present. This means areas may have changed radically by now. The plot is nonstop action, and while sometimes not quite realistic, it's fun to read. I love the scene where Aimee escapes down a garbage chute. If Aimee had pet rats like me, she wouldnt find them quite so horrifying. They'd prefer a nice clean home, too. The character I'm liking more and more is Aimee's partner Rene. I'm glad the author gave him an expanded role in this story, and I hope she continues to do so. He's really amazing; they should do more mystery solving as a team. Don't pay too much attention to negative comments, this series is a winner and I can't wait for the subsequent one.
Rated by buyers -
One of the problems with reading a novel that is part of a series is not reading until the fifth. Black's descriptions of Paris and the ambience of the neighborhoods reads like a well written travelogue on Lonely Planet. But I got tired of the number of times people drummed their nails or their finger or rattled their cups on a "zinc counter". Or how many time's Aimee had to changed torn fishnet stockings. Sometimes I got the feeling that the story was secondary to Black's knowledge about different areas of Paris.
As to the story...it gets in it's own way from time to time, and sometime just meanders along, "like the Seine on an amber autumn morning, lit by sun filtering through the clouds and fallen chestnut tree leaves, as lovers wandered hand in hand among the book stalls". Sorry got carried away...
Hard to tell whether she was trying to flesh out the story or had condensed it! Bottom line, the mystery was good and kept you guessing, but much of the time that may have been because we were "darkly looking through a nineteenth century, dappled window, which are so reminicent of the 14th arrondisement".
Rated by buyers -
Like Paris, the newest novel in the Aimee Leduc series is complicated, elegant, and lush with pleasures. I've ardently followed this series from the start. As always, Paris herself is a leading character (and the history of France is too); unlike other popular writers Black draws a Paris very much like the real one, of wealthy aristos and struggling immigrants, refinement and poverty, where past and present mingle with comfortable familiarity. We also are given more and richer insights into Aimee and, in particular, her partner Ren. I am loving the way Aimee, and Black, are developing. This is the best Leduc Detective yet.
Rated by buyers 
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generally a big fan of Cara Black but this latest is a big mound of material searching for a decent editor. Even for a big fan its a slog. I think that there is a fine book buried in the text but whomever is claiming to be the editor of this book should be fired - it's a mess. Second Draft (maybe) but ready for publication it is not!
Rated by buyers 
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The risk one always runs in picking up a series with the latest book is not having the backstory and knowing the identity of the characters. I very much felt that which this series. I appreciated the descriptions of the city, and the intricacy of the plot and having it unfold to me as it did the characters. But I also found it hard to relate to the characters and felt the story was very slow. It was easy for me to put the book down and hard to pick it back up. The writing is very good but, as I usually do, I would recommend starting the series at the beginning.
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