Murder Below Montparnasse

A long-lost Modigliani portrait, a grieving brother’s blood vendetta, a Soviet secret that’s been buried for 80 years—Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc’s current case is her most exciting one yet. The cobbled streets of Montparnasse might have been boho-chic in the 1920s, when artists, writers, and their muses drank absinthe and danced on cafe tables. But to Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc, these streets hold darker secrets. When an old Russian man named Yuri hires Aimée to protect a priceless painting that just might be a Modigliani, she learns how deadly art theft can be. Yuri is found tortured to death in his atelier, and the painting is missing. Every time Aimée thinks she's found a new witness, the body count rises. What exactly is so special about this painting that so many people are willing to kill—and die—for it?

A long-lost Modigliani portrait, a grieving brother’s blood vendetta, a Soviet secret that’s been buried for 80 years—Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc’s current case is her most exciting one yet. The cobbled streets of Montparnasse might have been boho-chic in the 1920s, when artists, writers, and their muses drank absinthe and danced on cafe tables. But to Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc, these streets hold darker secrets. When an old Russian man named Yuri hires Aimée to protect a priceless painting that just might be a Modigliani, she learns how deadly art theft can be. Yuri is found tortured to death in his atelier, and the painting is missing. Every time Aimée thinks she's found a new witness, the body count rises. What exactly is so special about this painting that so many people are willing to kill—and die—for it?

New York Times Bestseller Cara Black’s fashionable Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc has a new look for her 14th adventure: five months pregnant. June, 1998: Paris’s sticky summer heat is even more oppressive than usual as rowdy French football fans riot in anticipation of the World Cup. Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been trying to slow down her hectic lifestyle—she’s five months pregnant and has the baby’s well-being to think about now. But then disaster strikes close to home. A serial rapist has been terrorizing Paris’s Pigalle neighborhood, following teenage girls home and attacking them in their own houses. Zazie, the 13-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aimée’s favorite café, has disappeared. The police aren’t mobilizing quickly enough, and when Zazie’s desperate parents approach Aimée for help, she knows she couldn’t say no even if she wanted to. From the Hardcover edition.

The third Aimée Leduc Investigation set in Paris When Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc picks up the phone one hot July afternoon, the call turns her life upside-down. The voice on the other end, with its heavy German accent, belongs to a woman named Jutta Hald. Jutta claims to have shared a jail cell with Aimée’s long-lost mother, a suspected terrorist on Interpol’s most wanted list. If Aimée wants to learn the truth about her mother, she is to meet Jutta at a rendezvous point in an ancient tower in the Sentier. But when Aimée arrives, Jutta is dead, shot in the head at close range. Aimée realizes she has stumbled into something bigger than Jutta let on, and that her own life is in danger. She has a lot of unsolved mysteries in front of her: Jutta Hald’s murder, resurfaced materials from Sydney Leduc’s terrorist activities in the 1970s, police suppression of important information. The question is, can Aimée put the pieces together before someone else ends up dead?

A dying woman has secret about the unsolved murder of Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc’s father, but is kidnapped before she can reveal it Paris, April 1999: Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her—running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bébé. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée’s father’s unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no? The dying woman’s secret is even more dangerous than her son realized. When Aimée arrives at the hospital, the boy’s mother has disappeared. She was far too sick to leave on her own—she must have been abducted. What does she know that’s so important it’s worth killing for? And will Aimée be able to find her before it’s too late and the medication keeping her alive runs out?

As protesters march in Paris against a government agreement with an oil company suspected of polluting, Aimee Leduc, French-American computer investigator, finds herself with an abandoned infant, a drowned woman, a murdered client and a computer assignment deadline.

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.

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.