The Paris Directive: A Novel [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Like most long-time mystery readers, I feel an eager anticipation when I start the first book in a new series, wondering if it will be an introduction to a protagonist who will become like an old friend, revisited each year. In the case of The Paris Directive, just the listing of the first few chapters provided a frisson of excitement:

1. Berlin
2. Élysée Palace, Paris
3. Hotel Adlon, Berlin
4. L'Ermitage, Taziac
5. Frankfurt
6. Dordogne River, Bergerac
7. Café Valon, Taziac

Ah, looks like international intrigue. Sure enough, we begin by meeting Klaus Reiner, hired killer, whose cold efficiency, bland good looks and fluency in German, French and English have put him at the peak of his deadly profession, with the ability to choose the most lucrative contracts.

Reiner's newest assignment takes him to the fictional village of Taziac, in France's Dordogne. The beautiful village in summer, with its cafés and restaurants, makes no impression on the all-business Reiner. He just wants to get the job done and move on, with the satisfaction of seeing an impressively large new deposit to his numbered account in Switzerland. But the hit goes wrong and Reiner has to take out four middle-aged tourists, instead of just the one assigned to him.

This is where our protagonist enters the scene. Paul Mazarelle, a former Paris police detective now living in Taziac, jumps on the case like a dog on a bone. Mazarelle had moved to Taziac, his young wife's home village, when she became ill, and he is now a widower who doesn't know whether to make Taziac his permanent home or return to Paris. Mazarelle is a comfortably large, middle-aged man with a luxuriant mustache, who enjoys his pipe, good wine and food, and women. But, most of all, Mazarelle likes to sink his teeth into a meaty murder case.

Mazarelle's investigation quickly identifies a likely suspect, but he has some doubts and digs deeper, mostly hampered, more than helped, by his men, especially Dutoit, whose job qualifications include stupidity, laziness, insolence, racism and habitual abuse of suspects and witnesses. When a couple of the murder victims' daughter arrives from the U.S. to kibitz the investigation and further inflame the interest of the already-annoying journalists who have descended on the town, Mazarelle's job becomes even more complicated.

An intriguing cat-and-mouse game begins between Mazarelle and Reiner, which leads to a tense and dramatic climax. Readers who enjoy inverted mysteries (those in which the culprit is known; not a whodunnit) should enjoy this story--though it has some flaws, mostly in characterization. The reader doesn't get a good feel for what Mazarelle is really like. At first, he seems like a shrewd, avuncular investigator. But later actions belie that image and we don't read anything to reconcile the differences into a fuller understanding of a more complex character. Similarly, Reiner turns from a coldly calculating and controlled, intelligent hitman into something quite different, but with no hint of the reasons for the alteration.

Gerald Jay is a pseudonym. Whoever he is, despite these stumbles in characterization, his writing is assured and powerful, leading me to believe he must have some kind of writing experience. Jay is said to be at work on a new Mazarelle book. I'm hopeful that as we get to know Mazarelle better, he will become an old friend.

Want some international intrigue..or how about a paid assassin? Or maybe a book set in Canada..and Paris..and Germany and in a small rural town in the Dordogne River region of France. Throw in some corporate espionage and a young American woman being hunted by a killer and then top it all off with a classic French detective in the vein of Poirot or Maigret, clever but bored, flawed but dogged.
Yes, in this book you can have all that and more. It almost sounds like overkill, too much to include in a believable plot, but somehow Gerald Jay (a pseudonym) is clever enough to pull it off smoothly and produce a quite entertaining book.

This is more a thriller than a mystery, in that we know from the first pages who the hired killer is, Klaus Reiner. Or at least, that is the name he is going by at the moment. We witness his execution of a blackmailer as he gives her just one sharp shove down an empty elevator shaft, so clean, so neat, just like he likes things. And then we are there as two former French agents hire him to kill a tourist who will be vacationing with his wife and friends in the fictional village of Taziac. He has a clever plan but things go a little wrong and he ends up having to kill all four, an American and a Canadian couple, in a particularly gruesome way, a crime too loud to be covered up quietly as he promised those who hired him. So he needs to do some cleanup as well. He attempts to set up an Arab handyman for the crime..the man is an admitted thief and wife beater..and the regional police may have bought it, but when Inspector Mazarelle is brought in, it is a different story. Mazarelle was a very successful police inspector in Paris, but moved to Taziac so his dying wife could be at home for her last days. But she is now gone and the inspector is very, very bored with the petty crime of the area. This is the challenge he is looking for! Then to make the hitman's task ever harder, the daughter of the one couple, an ADA from NYC, arrives to identify her parents bodies and she too is after the identity of the real killer. So much for the killer to clean up now.

The real mystery, not clear at first in that pile of bodies at the vacation house, is who the intended victim actually is and who and why he was wanted dead. That's where all that international intrigue comes in, with twists and turns, until all working itself out quite neatly at the end. A suggestion...do not double cross a hit man after you hire him. It will not work out well for you.

This is the first book in a series, with a sequel promised in the near future. And I tell you, when it comes out, I will be reading it. Mazarelle is at the heart of this book and he is a great character, with his big mustache, his taste for a nice cognac and a plate of his favorite duck confit in the evening and his kitty, who better hope he has one of his nine lives left. The setting, mainly in the French countryside is delightful, even with a few neo-Nazis running around and the plot moves along at a good, believable pace to an exciting climax just made for the big screen.

Having read and enjoyed mystery/suspense books for over half a century, I'm always on the lookout for new writers. Since "Gerald Jay" is a "nom de plume", there is no way to know if he is really a he or if s/he is a new writer, but I"m going with the information I have. This is well written technically, and, though too much was based on forced coincidences, it started off well.

The characters are basically interesting, though not particularly well developed. The few main people moving around the French town of Taziac are pretty unique and, though he may have been given too many shortcomings, Inspector Mazarelle comes across as a combination of Poirot and Columbo. I'm still not sure just how well that combination will work for a series.

Halfway through the book, I was stunned by actions of one of the characters. I dislike books that take supposedly smart people and have them do dumb things just so the story can take a twist. In this case it was unbelievably dumb given the circumstances. The rest of the book became totally predictable. This caused me to cringe while reading; never a good thing.

Getting through the rest of the book was more chore than fun. But, finish it I did. Characters acting out of character does not make for a believable story. And, while some "coincidences" are bound to happen in the world, too many, involving the same people, and occurring in a short period of time (not to mention at just the right moment - but I"ll mention it anyway) take a book with an interesting premise and turn it into a book that's just OK. Per Amazon, that's three stars.