Why a Booktrail?
1890s: A bookshop owner solves crimes in Paris..
The Père-Lachaise Mystery
What you need to know before your trail
In Paris 1890, Lady’s maid Denise le Louarn fears the worst when her mistress, Odette de Valois, vanishes from the Père-Lachaise cemetery during a visit to her husband’s grave. All alone in the great metropolis, Denise knows just one person she can go to for help: Odette’s former lover, Victor Legris. When the frightened girl turns up at his bookshop and tells him her story, Victor feels there must be a simple explanation for Odette’s disappearance. But as he begins to look into the matter, it soon becomes clear that something sinister lies behind events at the Père-Lachaise.
Travel Guide
Pere
Oh the atmosphere of fin-de-siècle Paris is evoked here in every little detail. A little darker than the first book in the series, this is probably beccause its setting of one of the most iconic cemeteries in Paris. This cemetery is full of the rich and famous, everyone from writers to philosophers and everyone in between. Odette seems to have gone missing there after trying to conjure up the ghost of her dead husband. Legris then trails across here and the whole of Paris looking for clues and a mysterious spiritualist who may lead him to finding out just what exactly happened.
The authors – Lilian Korb and Laurence Korb – who write under the name Claude Izner evoke the gothic and the crazy of France at the turn of the century. As Legris moves around PAris, you can practically follow his every step and whilst good for a booktrail, this does detract from the story and the tension. Still there is also the historical aspect and you even get part of a guide as to where the great and the good once lived as Legris races past certain buildings or houses.
The time period and the setting are exciting and with the inclusion of a bookseller/sleuth and an old gravedigger at Pere Lachaise Cemetery, this is a deep and ghostly visit to Paris and its most haunting of places.
Streetview Maps
A Pere Lachaise
D) The Seine where the body is found
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