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Murder In Montparnasse
  
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Murder In Montparnasse (Mass Market Paperback)

by Howard Engel (Author)
4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)

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From Amazon.com

Penzler Pick, January 2001: Howard Engel's Murder in Montparnasse, an intrigue-filled novel set in the Left Bank's glorious heyday in the 1920s, joins Stephen Glazier's The Lost Provinces and William Wiser's Disappearances as an outstanding example of this minigenre. Engel, an award-winning Canadian writer best known for his Benny Cooperman mystery series, makes his narrator a fellow countryman, Mike Ward. An expatriate supporting himself as a translator for a press agency on the Right Bank, Ward prefers to spend his time amid the colorful personalities who are permanent fixtures at the sidewalk cafes of the Left. One of his first acquaintances, J. Miller Waddington, is a sometime boxer and bullfight aficionado who's come to the City of Light intending to write the Great American Novel. Who does that remind you of?

Engel offers other characters both in and out of fictional disguise, and figuring out just who's who provides part of the entertainment value. The Fitzgeralds are on the scene, of course (as Wilson and Georgia O'Donnell), while another famous couple of the era, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, walk through the action as themselves.

But there's another celebrated figure on hand who, in every way possible, is distinctly out of place. Jack the Ripper, or at least a killer who resembles that British fiend, is stalking Montparnasse, the bohemian quarter of the city, and his knife has already left behind five corpses. Not prostitutes, as in London, the victims have been artists' models, although one dead woman was an up-and-coming young painter. Fear is in the streets and starting to seep behind tightly closed shutters, and even in the brightly lit brasseries and bistros there is only a hollow feeling of safety.

While others of his acquaintance watch and wait with the fatalism of the poets and artists that they are, Mike Ward keeps his journalist's instincts about him. It occurs to him to wonder, after the latest slaying, if someone with a grudge against a former lover might not take lethal initiative advantage of the cover provided by the unknown Jack de Paris in order to commit murder and avoid suspicion. One of the best passages, for those keeping an eye out for the celebrities in these pages, is the section where Ward discusses his theories with an engaging character--only very lightly disguised--based on the legendary crime novelist Georges Simenon.

Howard Engel has obviously enjoyed the jigsaw aspects of arranging this quasi- historic mise en scène, and so will those readers whose taste runs both to pastiche and pastis. --Otto Penzler --This text refers to the Paperback edition.



From Publishers Weekly

Taking a break from his Benny Cooperman mysteries, Engel (Getting Away with Murder) presents a Parisian mystery involving cafes, romance, murder and lots of wine. In the fall of 1925, Canadian journalist Mike Ward arrives in the City of Light in search of the literary life. Soon he meets Jason Waddington, an expat American writer, and is lured into his circle of fashionable authors, painters, editors and socialites. Among them is the breathtaking Laure Duclos, a "teacher of French"; despite warnings from his friends that "she's poison," Ward is hooked after one look. Their affair is short-lived, however, since Laure is soon murdered, apparently by the notorious Jack de Paris, a serial killer with a penchant for stabbing beautiful women. Ward suspects someone has used Jack as cover to do away with Laure, however, and determines to find the real murderer. Meanwhile, cafe gossip insinuates that Waddington's current manuscript is a character-defaming expos? about his friends. Engel relies heavily on dialogue to push forward his plot, with plenty of intoxicated cafe talk thrown in, and his characters should please fans of the era: Waddington bears a pointed resemblance to Hemingway, and many other players are loosely based on notable writers or their famous fictional creations. Engel's descriptions of Paris in the '20s are charming, adding to the fun of the gambol he provides through the Left Bank and its denizens. Agent, Beverly Slopen. (Aug.)
Copyright 1999 Reed Business Information, Inc. --This text refers to the Hardcover edition.
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4.0 out of 5 stars HIGHLY READABLE MULTI-LAYERED MYSTERY, Feb 26 2004
By Gail Cooke (TX, USA) - See all my reviews
(TOP 50 REVIEWER)    (REAL NAME)   
This review is from: Murder In Montparnasse (Paperback)
Think 1920's, the Left Bank, Hemingway, prolonged erudite discussions over bottles of wine, and you've set the scene for what is billed as "A Mystery Of Literary Paris."

Mike Ward, a Canadian journalist, arrives in this wannabe mecca eager to be a part of the scene. He meets and befriends Jason Waddington (this is where you think Hemingway) who is quick to include Mike in a select coterie of writers, artists, and world weary types.

It seems there's also a murderer ala Jack the Ripper roaming those dimly lit streets. The killer has a penchant for fatally stabbing beautiful women. When gorgeous Laure Duclos, with whom Mike has been having a romantic encounters, falls victim, Mike has a theory of his own.

As Mike begins an investigation of his own, café rumor has it that Waddington's latest book is a thinly disguised roman a clef, a character besmirching study of his friends.

A highly readable multi-layered mystery

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