Harvee's Reviews > Paris City of Night
My rating:
Paris City of Night
by David Downie (Goodreads Author)
by David Downie (Goodreads Author)
Paris is known as the City of Lights but in this novel of suspense, Paris City of Night, journalist and travel writer David Downie shows us a seamier and more sinister side of the famous city where he lives and writes.
There are police everywhere in the city because of the constant threat of terrorism, many of the buildings are old, dusty, and fragile, and the past is ever present.
The novel begins in 1950, with George Henri in a photography darkroom developing a picture of a man with round glasses in a raincoat and panama hat, leaning on the deck of a ship. We find out the man is Adolf Eichmann leaving France by boat for Buenos Aires.
Shift to Paris in 2007 and the image of an old woman in her 90s, having delusions, nightmares, and reliving the past fitfully. We find out she is Madeleine de Lafayette, a Resistance fighter in her youth during the war, and "a key player in the misguided Allied effort to fight Communism by smuggling Nazis to freedom." (publisher's description).
Her protege, photographer Jay Grant returns from a trip and finds Madeleine has died and an item in her photo collection sold at auction. A daguerreotype Jay had made some years back was sold for an outrageous price, given it was a forgery. Frantic to recover this copy and others, to keep out of jail, Jay goes about tracing the unknown seller of the item. This begins a long and strange journey where he discovers secrets about his father "the spook", about Madeleine, and more about the use of darregueotypes to send encrypted messages during the war.
When the man he is following is killed and attempts are made on his life, Jay becomes frantic and enlists the help of his fiancee Amy, a journalist in Paris. How does the past link to the present? Who from the past has killed Madeleine and others and for what reason?
The plot is complex, changes direction midstream, and takes you to a different ending than the one you imagined. I would have preferred less detail about the history of photography, encryption, and daguerreotype. I think a different genre would have been better to showcase all the information the author has woven into the book. For a mystery novel, the amount of information was a bit overwhelming. In certain parts, I got impatient for the story to move on.
Overall though, Paris City of Night has a very good plot with a lot of fast action, chase scenes, and atmosphere. There is excellent characterization and descriptions of time and place. In other words, I got a good sense of Paris as a City of Night.
There are police everywhere in the city because of the constant threat of terrorism, many of the buildings are old, dusty, and fragile, and the past is ever present.
The novel begins in 1950, with George Henri in a photography darkroom developing a picture of a man with round glasses in a raincoat and panama hat, leaning on the deck of a ship. We find out the man is Adolf Eichmann leaving France by boat for Buenos Aires.
Shift to Paris in 2007 and the image of an old woman in her 90s, having delusions, nightmares, and reliving the past fitfully. We find out she is Madeleine de Lafayette, a Resistance fighter in her youth during the war, and "a key player in the misguided Allied effort to fight Communism by smuggling Nazis to freedom." (publisher's description).
Her protege, photographer Jay Grant returns from a trip and finds Madeleine has died and an item in her photo collection sold at auction. A daguerreotype Jay had made some years back was sold for an outrageous price, given it was a forgery. Frantic to recover this copy and others, to keep out of jail, Jay goes about tracing the unknown seller of the item. This begins a long and strange journey where he discovers secrets about his father "the spook", about Madeleine, and more about the use of darregueotypes to send encrypted messages during the war.
When the man he is following is killed and attempts are made on his life, Jay becomes frantic and enlists the help of his fiancee Amy, a journalist in Paris. How does the past link to the present? Who from the past has killed Madeleine and others and for what reason?
The plot is complex, changes direction midstream, and takes you to a different ending than the one you imagined. I would have preferred less detail about the history of photography, encryption, and daguerreotype. I think a different genre would have been better to showcase all the information the author has woven into the book. For a mystery novel, the amount of information was a bit overwhelming. In certain parts, I got impatient for the story to move on.
Overall though, Paris City of Night has a very good plot with a lot of fast action, chase scenes, and atmosphere. There is excellent characterization and descriptions of time and place. In other words, I got a good sense of Paris as a City of Night.
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