Cara Black’s riveting 19th installment in her New York Times bestselling Parisian detective series entangles private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft, post-colonial Franco-African politics, and neighborhood secrets in Paris’s 12th arrondissement.
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is about to go onstage to deliver the keynote address at a tech conference that is sure to secure Leduc Detective some much-needed business contracts when she gets an emergency phone call from her daughter’s playgroup: Aimée’s own mother, who was supposed to pick Chloe up, never showed. Abandoning her hard-won speaking gig, Aimée rushes to get Chloe, annoyed that her mother has let her down yet again.
But as Aimée and Chloe are leaving the playground, Aimée witnesses the body of a homeless woman being wheeled away from the neighboring convent, where nuns run a soup kitchen. The last person anyone saw the dead woman talking to was Aimée’s mother, who has vanished. Trying to figure out what happened to Sydney Leduc, Aimée tracks down the dead woman’s possessions, which include a huge amount of cash. What did Sydney stumble into? Is she in trouble?
A confession fifty years in the making puts everyone’s favorite Paris détéctive très chic, Aimée Leduc, on a collision course with the “Hand,” a cabal of corrupt Parisian cops among who masterminded her father’s murder—and among whose ranks he might have once found membership. When a friend’s child is kidnapped while wearing her daughter’s hoodie, Aimée realizes that the case has crossed into the realm of the personal in more ways than one.
A dying man drags his oxygen machine into the office of Éric Besson, a lawyer in Paris’s 13th arrondissement. The old man, an accountant, is carrying a dilapidated notebook full of meticulous investment records. For decades, he has been helping a cadre of dirty cops launder stolen money. The notebook contains his full confession—he’s waited 50 years to make it, and now it can’t wait another day. He is adamant that Besson get the notebook into the hands of La Proc, Paris’s chief prosecuting attorney, so the corruption can finally be brought to light. But en route to La Proc, Besson’s courier—his assistant and nephew—is murdered, and the notebook disappears.
Grief-stricken Éric Besson tries to hire private investigator Aimée Leduc to find the notebook, but she is reluctant to get involved. Her father was a cop and was murdered by the same dirty syndicate the notebook implicates. She’s not sure which she’s more afraid of, the dangerous men who would kill for the notebook or the idea that her father’s name might be among the dirty cops listed within it. Ultimately that’s the reason she must take the case, which leads her across the Left Bank, from the Cambodian enclave of Khmer Rouge refugees to the ancient royal tapestry factories to the modern art galleries.
A Los Angeles Times National Bestseller A BBC Best Summer Read of 2017 A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017 A Huffington Post Best Mystery of 2017
Paris, July 1999: Private investigator Aimée Leduc is walking through Saint-Germain when she is accosted by Suzanne Lesage, a Brigade Criminelle agent on an elite counterterrorism squad. Suzanne has just returned from the former Yugoslavia, where she was hunting down dangerous war criminals for the Hague. Back in Paris, Suzanne is convinced she’s being stalked by a ghost—a Serbian warlord her team took down. She’s suffering from PTSD and her boss thinks she’s imagining things. She begs Aimée to investigate—is it possible Mirko Vladić could be alive and in Paris with a blood vendetta?
Aimée is already working on a huge case; plus, she’s got an eight-month-old baby to take care of. But she can’t say no to Suzanne, whom she owes a big favor. Aimée chases the few leads she has, and all evidence confirms Mirko Vladić is dead. It seems that Suzanne is in fact paranoid, perhaps losing her mind—until Suzanne’s team begins to die in a series of strange, tragic accidents. Are these just coincidences? Or are things not what they seem?
The world knows Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc, heroine of 15 mysteries in this New York Times bestselling series, as a très chic, no-nonsense detective—the toughest and most relentless in the City of Lights. Now, author Cara Black dips back in time to reveal how Aimée first came to inherit Leduc Detective . . .
November 1989: Aimée Leduc is in her first year of college at Paris’s preeminent medical school. She lives in a 17th-century apartment that overlooks the Seine with her father, who runs the family detective agency.
But the week the Berlin Wall crumbles, so does Aimée’s life as she knows it. First, someone has sabotaged her lab work, putting her at risk of failing out of the program. Then, she finds out her aristo boyfriend is getting engaged to another woman. And finally, Aimée’s father takes off to Berlin on a mysterious errand. He asks Aimée to help out at the detective agency while he’s gone—as if she doesn’t already have enough to do. But the case Aimée finds herself investigating—a murder linked to a transport truck of Nazi gold that disappeared in the French countryside during the height of World War II—has gotten under her skin. Her heart may not lie in medicine after all—maybe it’s time to think harder about the family business.
A dying woman has secret about the unsolved murder of Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc’s father, but is kidnapped before she can reveal it
Paris, April 1999: Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her—running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bébé. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée’s father’s unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no?
The dying woman’s secret is even more dangerous than her son realized. When Aimée arrives at the hospital, the boy’s mother has disappeared. She was far too sick to leave on her own—she must have been abducted. What does she know that’s so important it’s worth killing for? And will Aimée be able to find her before it’s too late and the medication keeping her alive runs out?
New York Times Bestseller Cara Black’s fashionable Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc has a new look for her 14th adventure: five months pregnant.
June, 1998: Paris’s sticky summer heat is even more oppressive than usual as rowdy French football fans riot in anticipation of the World Cup. Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been trying to slow down her hectic lifestyle—she’s five months pregnant and has the baby’s well-being to think about now. But then disaster strikes close to home. A serial rapist has been terrorizing Paris’s Pigalle neighborhood, following teenage girls home and attacking them in their own houses. Zazie, the 13-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aimée’s favorite café, has disappeared. The police aren’t mobilizing quickly enough, and when Zazie’s desperate parents approach Aimée for help, she knows she couldn’t say no even if she wanted to.
A long-lost Modigliani portrait, a grieving brother’s blood vendetta, a Soviet secret that’s been buried for 80 years—Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc’s current case is her most exciting one yet.The cobbled streets of Montparnasse might have been boho-chic in the 1920s, when artists, writers, and their muses drank absinthe and danced on cafe tables. But to Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc, these streets hold darker secrets. When an old Russian man named Yuri hires Aimée to protect a priceless painting that just might be a Modigliani, she learns how deadly art theft can be. Yuri is found tortured to death in his atelier, and the painting is missing. Every time Aimée thinks she’s found a new witness, the body count rises. What exactly is so special about this painting that so many people are willing to kill—and die—for it?
The twelfth Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris
Lost secrets of the Parisian Knights Templar, dangerous Chinatown sweatshops, dirty policemen, and botched affairs of the heart—the 12th Aimée Leduc mystery is the most exciting yet!
Aimée Leduc is happy her longtime business partner René has found a girlfriend. It’s not her fault if she can’t suppress her doubts about the relationship. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never returns to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway—with Meizi’s photo in his wallet.
Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can’t figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi’s disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France’s secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they’re keeping tabs on Aimée. What has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself—and her friends—back out of it alive?
The eleventh Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris
Business is booming for Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc. But she finds time to do a favor for her godfather, Commissaire Morbier, who asks her to drop by the gorgeous Passy home of his girlfriend, Xavierre d’Eslay, a haut bourgeois matron of Basque origin. Xavierre has been so busy with her daughter’s upcoming wedding that she has stopped taking Morbier’s calls, and he’s worried something serious is going on. When Aimée crashes the rehearsal dinner, Xavierre is discovered strangled in her own yard, and circumstantial evidence makes Morbier the prime suspect. To vindicate her godfather, Aimée must find the real killer. Her investigation leads her to police corruption, radical Basque terrorists, and a kidnapped Spanish princess.
Someone impersonating Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc shoots her partner, René, and eyewitnesses identify Aimée as the culprit. She must clear herself and find the shooter before she finishes the job
Just as Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is about to leave for New York City to pursue a lead on a man who might be her brother, her fellow detective, René Friant, is wounded by a near-fatal gunshot. Aimée is distraught over René’s condition and horrified to be under suspicion for the attack; police have pegged her as the guilty party. At the same time, a large, mysterious sum appears in Leduc Detective’s bank account, and tax authorities descend upon Aimée. It seems someone is impersonating her—someone who wants revenge. But for what?
A Haitian woman arrives at the office of Leduc Detective proclaiming that she is Aimée Leduc’s sister, her father’s illegitimate daughter. Aimée is thrilled; she has always wanted a sister. Her partner, René, is wary of this stranger, but Aimée embraces her. She soon unearths a secret that leads her to a murder in the old university district of Paris, the Latin Quarter.
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc is head-over-heels when a former boyfriend, an investigative journalist, reappears and proposes—but his professional past has caught up with him, and now Aimée must figure out who would want him dead
Aimée Leduc seems to be having a streak of good luck. First, she secures a lucrative computer security contract for her Paris detective agency. Then her ex-boyfriend Yves, the gorgeous bad-boy investigative journalist, reappears in her life. He insists he’s back in Paris indefinitely—and wants to make the ultimate commitment. He proposes to her that very night, and Aimée can’t help but say yes.
When she wakes up in the morning, though, Yves is gone without even leaving a note. Aimée is irate until she learns the awful truth: Yves was murdered early that morning. Heartbroken and convinced the Brigade Criminelle are not following the right leads, Aimée pursues the mystery behind her fiancé’s murder. Yves was killed trying to further a cause he believed in. Even if it means putting her own life on the line, Aimée won’t let him die in vain.
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc finds herself caring for an abandoned infant while trying to track down the child’s missing mother
Aimée Leduc is on a tight work deadline when an anonymous call leads her to an abandoned infant in her building’s courtyard. Aimée’s search for little Stella’s mother that will soon have her on the run from a cold-hearted killer and embroiled in a conflict between oil tycoons and environmental protesters.
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is working on a tight deadline for a cybersecurity contract when she gets a phone call that disrupts all her progress. The female voice on the other end begs Aimée to go out into her courtyard, insists that her life is in danger, that Aimée must not call the police, then hangs up. Aimée’s project is in jeopardy, and her partner, René, will be furious if she botches this assignment, but she can’t ignore the distress in the mysterious caller’s voice. That doesn’t mean she’s prepared for what she finds in the courtyard, though: a newborn baby, wrapped in a blood-stained beaded jacket.
Aimée wants to track down the baby’s mother, but when a young woman’s body washes up in the Seine on the shores of the Ile Saint-Louis, the little island where Aimée herself lives, she realizes the situation is very dangerous. Paris has been rife with bomb threats linked to protesting environmental groups, and with a little investigating Aimée becomes convinced the baby, the body in the Seine, and the protests are somehow linked. Not that Aimée can afford distraction from her paying work right now–Leduc Detective is in bad financial straits. But despite themselves, Aimée and René have both fallen in love with the baby girl, whom Aimee nicknames Stella. Taking care of Stella’s needs—and protecting her from whoever hurt or killed her missing mother—must take priority over their computer security contract with a big publicity firm. Meanwhile, she’s following leads to the infant’s mother that take her to a radical dispossessed Polish prince, a community of homeless people who live in the sewer caves of the Seine, and a sexy documentary film maker. Can Aimée finish her security job, figure out who Stella belongs to, track down the missing mother, and protect herself and her friends from the danger that is circling them, all while juggling a newborn infant?
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, now a policewoman, who’s charged with shooting her partner
Aimée Leduc is having a bad day. First, she comes home from work at her Paris detective agency to learn that her boyfriend is leaving her. She goes out for a drink with her friend Laure, a police officer, but Laure’s patrol partner, Jacques, interrupts, saying he needs to talk to Laure urgently. The two leave the bar, and when they don’t return, Aimée follows Laure’s path and finds her sprawled on a snowy rooftop, not far from Jacques, who is bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound.
When the police arrive, they arrest Laure for murder. No one is interested in helping Aimée figure out the truth. As she chases down increasingly dangerous leads in the effort to free her friend, Aimée stumbles into a web of Corsican nationalists, separatists, gangsters, and artists. Could Jacques’s murder and Laure’s arrest be part of a much bigger cover-up?
A botched assignment leaves Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc in possession of a cache of priceless Vietnamese jade. The jade’s history is steeped in colonial bloodshed—and someone is willing to spill even more blood to get it back
Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple in Paris by her partner, René Friant. He urges her to learn to meditate: she could use a more healthful approach to life. The Vietnamese nun Linh has been helping Aimée to attain her goal, so when she asks Aimée for a favor—to go to the Clichy quartier to exchange an envelope for a package—René prompts Aimée to agree. But the intended recipient, Thadée Baret, is shot and dies in Aimée’s arms before the transaction can be completed, leaving Aimée with a wounded arm, a check for 50,000 francs, and a trove of ancient jade artifacts.
Whoever killed Baret wants the jade. The RG—the French secret service—a group of veterans of the war in Indochina and some wealthy ex-colonials and international corporations seeking oil rights are all implicated. And the nun, Linh, has disappeared.
