Just finished a new mystery novel by first time author Mark Pryor. Set in Paris, it features the protagonist Hugo Marston, a former FBI agent and now the head of security at the American Embassy. When he witnesses his older friend Max, a bouquiniste, or bookseller, being kidnapped at gunpoint right in front of him, Hugo is drawn into the seamier side of Paris. [Bouquinistes sell used or antiquarian books along both banks of the Seine by using boxes affixed to railings to store their books, and they are closely regulated by the city.]
The plot is very involved, and includes a comte’s daughter, Claudia, as Hugo’s love interest, several murders, rare books, a great deal of investigating by Hugo and his friend, Tom, a former CIA agent, drug dealers, Parisian gendarmes, and lots of action. Hugo discovers that books were used during WWII to send messages by the Resistance as well as the Weirmacht, and Claudia’s father reveals some family history that he is ashamed of, which adds the element of historical fiction to the novel.
I enjoyed The Bookseller; it held my interest and I loved all the description of Parisian neighborhoods and French words interspersed throughout the dialogue. It’s the next best thing to “being there.”