Murder At The Porte De Versailles

This riveting 20th installment entangles Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft and terrorist threats in Paris's 15th arrondissement. November 2001: in the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of fear. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory—and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosives under his fingernails. Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. In an effort to prove this, she battles the police and his own lab colleagues, collecting conflicting eyewitness reports. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aimée uncovers ties to a cold case of her father’s. As Aimée scours the streets of the 15th arrondissement trying to learn the truth, she has to ask herself if she should succumb to pressure from Chloe’s biological father and move them out to his farm in Brittany. But could Aimée Leduc ever leave Paris?

Facing a tight deadline on a computer security contract, Aimee responds to a telephone call from a stranger that leads her to an abandoned infant in a courtyard on the Ile St-Louis. She brings the baby home with her, calls her Stella, and awaits contact from the mother. But days pass, and no one reclaims the infant.Meanwhile, a group of environmental protesters is trying to stop the government from entering into a contract with an oil company notorious for pollution. As Aimee attempts to identify the baby's mother, two murders and an abortive bombing involving the protesters lead her - and little Stella - into danger.On the run in the sewers beneath the Seine, Aimee finally finds the woman she has been looking for, only to discover that the man she has fallen in love with is not who she thought he was.

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?

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? From the Trade Paperback edition.

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? From the Trade Paperback edition.

In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light—abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why. Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the Führer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands. When Kate misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life—all the time wrestling with the suspicion that the whole operation was a set-up. New York Times bestselling author Cara Black is at her best as she brings Occupation-era France to vivid life in this masterful, pulse-pounding story about one young woman with the temerity—and drive—to take on Hitler himself. *Features an illustrated map of 1940s Paris as full color endpapers.

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. From the Trade Paperback edition.

The second Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris When Anaïs de Froissart calls Parisian private investigator Aimée begging for help, Aimée assumes the woman wants to hire her to do surveillance on her philandering politician husband again. Aimée is too busy right now to indulge her. But Anaïs insists Aimée must come, that she is in trouble and scared. Aimée tracks Anaïs down just in time to see a car bomb explode, injuring Anaïs and killing the woman she was with. Anaïs can’t explain what Aimée just witnessed. The dead woman, Anaïs says, is Sylvie Coudray, her cheating husband’s long-time mistress, but she has no idea who wanted her dead, and Anaïs officially hires Aimée to investigate. As she digs into Sylvie Coudray’s murky past, Aimée finds that the dead woman may not be who Anaïs thought she was. Her Belleville neighborhood, full of North African immigrants, may be hiding clues to Sylvie’s identity. As a prominent Algerian rights activist stages a hunger protest against new immigration laws, Aimée begins to wonder whether Sylvie’s death was an act of terrorism, and who else may be at risk.