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Product Description
It's autumn 1925, and a killer uncannily like England's Jack the Ripper is stalking the city streets of Paris and preying on young women. Michael Ward is a journalist newly arrived to the Left Bank. When he falls in with Jason Waddington, an expatriate American writer who introduces him to the cafe scene and his crowd of writers and artists, Ward soon discovers that Jack de Paris is not the only trouble afoot in the City of Light. Rumor has it that Waddington has written a damaging roman a clef about his friends, and tempers are rising even as fear of the killer grips the city. When the body of Laure Duclos is found, it seems their circle has finally been touched by Jack. But Ward has his doubts and begins to wonder whether Laure was truly Jack de Paris's latest victim, or if someone else was using the serial killer as a convenient cover to protect themselves.
In a feat of literature reminiscent of Caleb Carr's The Alienist, Howard Engel blends intriguing historical fact with nail-biting fiction to produce a thriller of the highest order. Murder in Montparnasse will delight both new readers of Engel and his long-time fans.
Amazon.com Review
It might help to have a copy of Hemingway's The Sun Also Rises handy as you read this marvelously rich and evocative mystery set among the expatriates in Paris in 1925. That way, you'll know exactly which of Howard Engel's characters are based on Hemingway's cast of thirtysomethings. Hemingway (who narrated his voice through Jake Barnes in The Sun Also Rises) is a cinch to spot in Engel's book--he's Jason Waddington, a tough American from Oak Park, Illinois, who loves boxing and bullfighting. In 1922, his wife lost a suitcase full of his original manuscripts on a train, and she has never quite gotten over the shame. That suitcase becomes a part of the mystery, as does "the Spanish novel," which Waddington wrote about his friends' bad behavior in Pamplona the summer before. Some of these "friends" will go to great lengths to keep the book from being published.
There are several lovely inside jokes, like the ambitious Belgian writer "Georges Sim" who knocks out books quickly and is encouraged to look into the possibility of writing detective stories. And there's enough drinking and snooty literary chatter about real writers and artists to make your head spin. --Dick Adler
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