THE CLOCK STRUCK MURDER

Hordes of tourists and broiling heat test the resolve of an American woman set on finding a killer in 1920s Paris.

Zoe Barlow was exiled to France by her racist family after secretly marrying a Black man and having his baby. The newborn was literally ripped from her arms and she doesn’t even know if her daughter survived. Subsisting on a small allowance, poker winnings, and the sale of her paintings, she’s built up a circle of Parisian friends from artists to aristocrats, and every penny she can spare goes to the Pinkerton Agency, which is looking for her baby. When her favorite clock is broken by a drunk guest at her weekly poker game, she purchases a replacement from Laurette Belcoeur, one of two sisters who run a small flea market in Montparnasse, but she gets more than she bargained for—the replacement clock turns out to be wrapped in a painting by Marc Chagall, who’d had most of his canvases stolen and sold by a so-called friend while he was away in Russia. Hoping to discover where Laurette got the painting, Zoe finds not only more of Chagall’s work but also Laurette’s bloody body. The inspector in charge of the case is once again Henri Challiot, Zoe’s married lover. Zoe returns what she found to Chagall without telling Henri. In her spare time, she reads to Henri’s wife, Gabrielle, who’s in a coma following a stroke—though, unbeknownst to anyone, she’s regained enough of her faculties to plot Zoe’s death. The 1924 Olympics keep the city crowded, but despite the crowds, the heat, and her many problems, Zoe can’t forget Laurette’s murder and puts herself in danger searching for motives for what seems a senseless death.

A complex and fascinating mystery adorned with historical characters from Marc Chagall to Johnny Weissmuller.