MAISY BELL IS MISSING

A newspaper reporter in 1938 Paris stubbornly refuses to let a woman’s disappearance be ignored.

Charlie James fled a scandal in Australia to take a job as a Paris correspondent with The Times, where she helped solve a murder. Ever since her last story put her in the hospital, her editor, George Roberts, has sought to keep her doing innocuous women’s interest stories, an assignment she despises. But the powerful and influential friends she’s made give her access to high society, including her colleague Violet Carthage and decorator Lady Eleanor Ashworth, who introduces Charlie to the problem of Maisy Bell, a rich young American who disappeared while traveling with her Aunt Clementine. The police aren’t interested because they think Maisy ran off with a mystery man she met at the Hotel Ritz. Clementine tells Charlie that she and Maisy met a charming man named Louis, possibly Swiss, who invited Maisy to visit his villa. That was the last she saw of either of them before receiving a ransom note. Though Charlie leans on her more-than-casual relationship with Inspecteur Benoît Bernard to interest him in Maisy’s case, not even the ransom note makes him consider it a high priority. Charlie, furious, thinks he’d take the case more seriously if only Maisy were male. On her own, she continues to pursue the true identity of the mystery man. Sent to cover a murder in Tours, she meets handsome Det. Gilles Allard, who appreciates her help with the murder and several more that follow, creating a definite link to Maisy.

An exciting series of mysterious deaths with a soupçon of romance for an intrepid reporter.