false http://photo.goodreads.com/books/1174625097m/424946.jpg 424946 4 <B>Penzler Pick, January 2001:</B> Howard Engel's <I>Murder in Montparnasse</I>, an intrigue-filled novel set in the Left Bank's glorious heyday in the 1920s, joins Stephen Glazier's <I>The Lost Provinces</I> and William Wiser's <I>Disappearances</I> as an outstanding example of this minigenre. Engel, an award-winning Canadian writer best known for his Benny Cooperman mystery series, makes his narrator a fellow countryman, Mike Ward. An expatriate supporting himself as a translator for a press agency on the Right Bank, Ward prefers to spend his time amid the colorful personalities who are permanent fixtures at the sidewalk cafes of the Left. One of his first acquaintances, J. Miller Waddington, is a sometime boxer and bullfight aficionado who's come to the City of Light intending to write the Great American Novel. Who does that remind you of?<p> Engel offers other characters both in and out of fictional disguise, and figuring out just who's who provides part of the entertainment value. The Fitzgeralds are on the scene, of course (as Wilson and Georgia O'Donnell), while another famous couple of the era, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, walk through the action as themselves.<p> But there's another celebrated figure on hand who, in every way possible, is distinctly out of place. Jack the Ripper, or at least a killer who resembles that British fiend, is stalking Montparnasse, the bohemian quarter of the city, and his knife has already left behind five corpses. Not prostitutes, as in London, the victims have been artists' models, although one dead woman was an up-and-coming young painter. Fear is in the streets and starting to seep behind tightly closed shutters, and even in the brightly lit brasseries and bistros there is only a hollow feeling of safety.<p> While others of his acquaintance watch and wait with the fatalism of the poets and artists that they are, Mike Ward keeps his journalist's instincts about him. It occurs to him to wonder, after the latest slaying, if someone with a grudge against a former lover might not take lethal initiative advantage of the cover provided by the unknown Jack de Paris in order to commit murder and avoid suspicion. One of the best passages, for those keeping an eye out for the celebrities in these pages, is the section where Ward discusses his theories with an engaging character--only very lightly disguised--based on the legendary crime novelist Georges Simenon. <p> Howard Engel has obviously enjoyed the jigsaw aspects of arranging this quasi- historic mise en scène, and so will those readers whose taste runs both to pastiche and pastis. <I>--Otto Penzler</I> 2251494 1999 Murder in Montparnasse: A Mystery of Literary Paris total:15|5:1|4:4|3:7|2:2|1:1| 15 47 24 3 5 0 false false Fri Feb 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Mon Jun 16 16:40:44 -0700 2008 Mon Jun 16 20:04:50 -0700 2008 more...]]> 3 0 false false Sat Mar 01 00:00:00 -0800 2008 Fri May 02 09:52:51 -0700 2008 Thu May 15 13:12:17 -0700 2008 more...]]> 1 0 false false Mon Jun 01 00:00:00 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 04 17:37:18 -0700 2009 Thu Jun 04 18:38:37 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Thu Nov 05 07:55:59 -0800 2009 Thu Nov 05 07:55:59 -0800 2009 0 0 false false Sun Oct 25 14:26:13 -0700 2009 Sun Oct 25 14:26:13 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Thu Sep 10 15:17:12 -0700 2009 Thu Sep 10 15:17:12 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Wed Sep 02 12:54:43 -0700 2009 Wed Sep 02 12:54:43 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Aug 16 10:17:40 -0700 2009 Mon Aug 17 12:41:06 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Fri Jul 24 20:48:33 -0700 2009 Fri Jul 24 20:48:33 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun Jun 28 18:21:23 -0700 2009 Sun Jun 28 18:21:23 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Sun May 24 20:53:37 -0700 2009 Sun May 24 20:53:40 -0700 2009 2 0 false false Tue Apr 21 13:31:26 -0700 2009 Tue Apr 21 13:31:26 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Mon Apr 13 14:04:09 -0700 2009 Mon Apr 13 14:04:09 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Tue Jul 07 18:07:13 -0700 2009 Wed Apr 01 10:52:06 -0700 2009 Tue Jul 07 18:07:13 -0700 2009 0 0 false false Tue Mar 24 09:37:19 -0700 2009 Tue Mar 24 09:37:19 -0700 2009 4 0 false false Mon Mar 02 07:01:52 -0800 2009 Mon Mar 02 07:01:52 -0800 2009 2 0 false false Tue Feb 10 08:44:09 -0800 2009 Wed Mar 25 06:20:56 -0700 2009 3 0 false false Tue Nov 25 08:33:46 -0800 2008 Tue Nov 25 08:33:46 -0800 2008 3 0 false false Tue Sep 02 00:00:00 -0700 2008 Sun Aug 31 14:23:30 -0700 2008 Tue Sep 02 11:59:40 -0700 2008 3 0 false false Sun Jun 29 08:28:38 -0700 2008 Sun Jun 29 08:28:38 -0700 2008 http://www.goodreads.com/book_link/follow/8?book_id=424946