With a twisty, well-crafted plot, this novel is rich in historical detail and robust with personality.
Three young women, joined by their independent spirits and love of art, become embroiled in a criminal plot in belle epoque Paris.
This rousing novel by Robertson (Circle of Shadows, 2013, etc.) starts calmly enough. Maud Heighton, a young Englishwoman in 1909, is a student at the Académie Lafond, an all-female painting school suitable for women of a middle-class background. Maud, however, is near destitute. Her meager inheritance covers little more than a room and the academy’s fees. She skimps on food to the extent that her hunger is noticed by the school’s regular model, Yvette. Also noting Maud’s obvious pride, the low-class Montmartre girl sends another student, Tanya, a rich, bright Russian, to intervene. With the help of a charity, they get Maud employed by a French gentleman, Christian Morel, as a companion to his sickly sister, Sylvie. That the position seems too good to be true is explained away by Christian’s confession that Sylvie is an opium addict, a secret Maud guards as her own in exchange for being well fed and having the freedom to paint. Maud, Tanya and Yvette are such distinct, likable characters that if there were no more plot than their striving for their own livelihoods it would be a lovely novel. Luckily, for lovers of adventure, there is more. The Morels are far more dangerous than they appear, and once the seeds of intrigue are planted, the scope of the book (and of Maud’s worldview) is expanded to encompass murderous plots, shady Parisian undersides, upper-class dealings, gems of history and gems—as in jewels. The women are heartwarming as friends and delightfully effective as crime fighters.
With a twisty, well-crafted plot, this novel is rich in historical detail and robust with personality.Pub Date: Nov. 18, 2014
ISBN: 978-1-250-05183-7
Page Count: 368
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Oct. 4, 2014
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Oct. 15, 2014
One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are...
A perfect wife’s disappearance plunges her husband into a nightmare as it rips open ugly secrets about his marriage and, just maybe, his culpability in her death.
Even after they lost their jobs as magazine writers and he uprooted her from New York and spirited her off to his childhood home in North Carthage, Mo., where his ailing parents suddenly needed him at their side, Nick Dunne still acted as if everything were fine between him and his wife, Amy. His sister Margo, who’d gone partners with him on a local bar, never suspected that the marriage was fraying, and certainly never knew that Nick, who’d buried his mother and largely ducked his responsibilities to his father, stricken with Alzheimer’s, had taken one of his graduate students as a mistress. That’s because Nick and Amy were both so good at playing Mr. and Ms. Right for their audience. But that all changes the morning of their fifth anniversary when Amy vanishes with every indication of foul play. Partly because the evidence against him looks so bleak, partly because he’s so bad at communicating grief, partly because he doesn’t feel all that grief-stricken to begin with, the tide begins to turn against Nick. Neighbors who’d been eager to join the police in the search for Amy begin to gossip about him. Female talk-show hosts inveigh against him. The questions from Detective Rhonda Boney and Detective Jim Gilpin get sharper and sharper. Even Nick has to acknowledge that he hasn’t come close to being the husband he liked to think he was. But does that mean he deserves to get tagged as his wife’s killer? Interspersing the mystery of Amy’s disappearance with flashbacks from her diary, Flynn (Dark Places, 2009, etc.) shows the marriage lumbering toward collapse—and prepares the first of several foreseeable but highly effective twists.
One of those rare thrillers whose revelations actually intensify its suspense instead of dissipating it. The final pages are chilling.Pub Date: June 5, 2012
ISBN: 978-0-307-58836-4
Page Count: 432
Publisher: Crown
Review Posted Online: April 22, 2012
Kirkus Reviews Issue: May 1, 2012
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
A somewhat entertaining but mostly predictable story; Champagne fans and readers who can’t get enough WWII fiction will...
Harmel (The Room on Rue Amélie, 2018, etc.) returns with another historical novel set in France during World War II.
This novel alternates between 1940 at the Chauveau Champagne winery near Reims as the German occupation begins and the present day in the same area, where recently divorced Liv Kent’s 99-year-old grandmother, Edith, has brought her so that Edith can attend to some “business.” Gradually Liv begins to understand they are in Reims so she can learn what happened in 1940 that changed the futures of her grandparents, their friends, and the Chauveau winery. She discerns this in part from the new man in her life, Julien, grandson and partner of Edith’s longtime lawyer. Harmel weaves in real historical figures such as Otto Klaebisch, the “weinführer” in Champagne during the war, and Count Robert-Jean de Vogüé, Resistance leader and head of Moët & Chandon. The story of fictional Resistance member and Champagne proprietor Michel Chauveau may be realistic, but parts of the story about his young wife, Inès, are less convincing. The Chauveaus employ winemaker Theo Laurent, whose wife Céline’s family is Jewish. While Inès’ naïve insistence that Céline’s family is far from danger is somewhat understandable—many people were unable to believe what was happening at the time—it doesn’t square with her recollection of her WWI veteran father insisting “You can never trust the Huns!” Inès’ vacillating sympathies might reflect her youth, but they set up a chain of events that leads to dramatic changes in her life, which in turn set up the dramatic unveiling of Edith’s secrets in the modern section of the book. All of which requires suspension of disbelief. Liv’s love interest, while sudden, is somewhat more believable, as is Edith’s reluctance to tell Liv the family history. Even in those sections, Harmel resorts to formulaic moments, such as a mix-up about whether Julien is married and a scene where a character is welcomed to heaven with forgiving words from other characters.
A somewhat entertaining but mostly predictable story; Champagne fans and readers who can’t get enough WWII fiction will probably still enjoy it.Pub Date: Aug. 13, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-9821-1229-5
Page Count: 400
Publisher: Gallery Books/Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: May 13, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: June 1, 2019
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