HUGUETTE

A brave young woman navigates the dangers of postwar France.

The Libération brings nothing resembling freedom to Huguette Faure. First, she gives birth to a baby boy conceived in an encounter that was anything but consensual. When the nuns rip the newborn from her side and sell him to a wealthy couple, she flees to Paris, where she’s hunted by vigilantes who consider her a collaborator. Her father is murdered, but instead of seeking his killer, the police try to arrest her. She lives by her wits, engaging in one shady enterprise after another, always pursued—by American soldiers, French patriots, and even the criminals with whom she freely associates. Like Kate Rees, heroine of Three Hours in Paris (2020) and Night Flight to Paris (2023), which are set in wartime France, Huguette is crafty enough to evade danger repeatedly. But as in Black’s stand-alones, the pace is punishing. The few times Huguette enjoys some measure of safety pass in the blink of an eye. In August 1945, she flees Paris, believing she’s been betrayed. When she next appears two years later, she’s somehow become a successful director at a film studio in Lyon. By the end of this chapter, she’s on the run again, this time headed to a war tribunal in Frankfurt. It seems as if Black has invented her with the sole purpose of testing her mettle over and over. The only saving grace is that Huguette’s tale also introduces the reader to Det. Claude Leduc, future grandfather of franchise sleuth Aimée Leduc. He can’t return soon enough.

Exhausting.