Off the Beaten Track: Savoring the History of Paris

Our guest this week is Yves Fey, whose historical mystery, Floats the Dark Shadow, is set in the dynamic and decadent world of Belle Époque Paris. Yves has an MFA in Creative Writing from Eugene Oregon, and a BA in Pictorial Arts from UCLA. She has read, written, and created art from childhood. A chocolate connoisseur, she's won prizes for her desserts. Her current fascination is creating perfumes. She's traveled to many countries in Europe and lived for two years in Indonesia. She currently lives in the San Francisco area with her husband and three cats.

I adore Art Nouveau. For me it is almost synonymous with the Belle Époque. Only almost, because so many art movements cascaded through Paris for decades, starting in the 1860s with Impressionism and spilling over into the 20th Century. Certainly the movement was sweeping the world as the century turned. Alphonse Muncha’s poster Gismonda gave birth to it in Paris.

The boutique from which the movement actually takes its name was open, selling the modern, cutting-edge designs by Lalique and Tiffany that now submerge us in a vibrant nostalgia. There are museums to visit, both huge collections like that of the Musée d’Orsay, and more intimate ones like the home of Gustav Moreau. If you play the flâneur, you might even encounter a film company bringing your favorite era to life.

 But you pass far more homes than you will be able to enter. However, you can enter, sit, and relish the past throughout the city. Starting with the Revolution, you can eat where the famous of Paris once ate and drink where they drank—especially if you’re willing to live on tasty street crepes, cheese, and fruit between forays into these often (but not always) pricey old cafés, bistros, brasseries, and restaurants.

My novel, Floats the Dark Shadow, is set in 1897 and much of the Art Nouveau building and interior design was in progress but not yet completed. A great number of new businesses revamped themselves for the Exposition of 1900, and still more were inspired by their lead. I’ve researched—such a lovely synonym for indulged—far more places than I’ve been able to use. So far. I’ve tried to be as accurate as possible, though I may have fudged a bit on the décor of Oscar Wilde’s favorite café, which was probably not yet renovated, but should have been. Le Grand Café des Capucines is perhaps a bit excessive, even for Oscar, but deliciously dazzling, with its glowing stained glass ceiling, plush red velvet seating, and the stray peacock or two.

Chez Julian was already serving gourmet meals in the then lavish theater district off one of the Grand Boulevards, and will appear in the second book of the series.

Nowadays the area is much shabbier, but the restaurant is still extraordinary—the interior gorgeous and the food excellent. La Fermette Marbeuf would soon be open, and a visitor today can revisit its glory—though its murals and carvings were actually covered over for decades, and only rediscovered during a renovation. The food was quite good.

The fare at Mollard was disappointing, but it was still delightful to visit one of the first Art Nouveau restaurants in Paris, with its painted columns and delightful tile murals.

Atop Montmartre, La Mère Catherine also caters primarily to the busy flood of tourists tromping through the mostly kitschy artists’ square of the Place de Terte. My heroine would have eaten here, when it was still a hangout for the local artists.

You can, of course, move forward in time to the cafés where Picasso, Fitzgerald, and Sartre hung out, or back to the oldest café in Paris, Le Procope, which opened in 1686. Voltaire and Rosseau drank the newly imported brew, served by waiters dressed in Armenian garb. Robespierre, Marat, and Danton had dinner while plotting the revolution, hurrying upstairs to ring a bell to summon their printer with the latest call to arms—a bell you can still see on the courtyard wall. Nowadays Le Procope serves mediocre food in a more classic French setting. 

My waiter was very friendly. If you peer closely, you’ll see he boasted a delightfully theatrical curled mustache.

The food is much better at two other of Paris’ grande dames. Le Grand Véfour is the oldest restaurant still on its original site. It opened in 1784 as Le Café des Chartres, then was refurbished in Pompeian glamour in 1820. At Le Grand Véfour, you can request the table where Victor Hugo ate, or perhaps you would prefer to take Colette’s seat?

La Tour d’Argent claims almost three centuries on Le Grand Véfour, but can only prove its existence as of an 1860 Baedeker. It’s almost worth a trip to Paris just to eat the fabled duck at La Tour d’Argent while looking out over the Seine at Notre Dame. If you do so, you will receive a postcard indicating just how many ducks have preceded yours—over a million. Here is my plate of duck with figs.

The meals at these restaurants are quite pricey. I couldn’t do dinner, but lunch was barely possible and worth a splurge to feel like a member of le tout-Paris.

Mentioned though not actually entered in my book, is one of my favorite indulgences—Ladurée in the Place Madeleine. The building was first a bakery built in 1862, just as the Opéra Garnier was rising. Destroyed by fire during the Commune of 1871, it was soon rebuilt and reconceived as the first tea shop in Paris. Jules Cheret, the famous poster artist, was entrusted with the interior design. None of my many photos capture its charm, so I’ve chosen the one with the least number of people dining or gathered about the pastry display.

Unlike cafés, respectable ladies could go to a tea shop on their own, chat and then venture out to shop in the first department stores such as Le Bon Marché designed by Monsieur Eiffel. At Ladurée, the hot chocolate is almost as thick as pudding, and many consider their macarons the best in Paris. It is not Art Nouveau, but quintessentially Belle Époque. When I first went there a decade ago, they had recently opened two new shops in Paris – now there are fourteen. Well over a dozen Ladurées exist elsewhere now, not only in France, but worldwide. There is even a Ladurée in Saudi Arabia. Whatever novel adventure you undertake, there is a least a chance you can pause and have tea at Ladurée.

Some of the restaurants’ sites offer more pictures:

http://www.legrandcafe.com/

http://www.fermettemarbeuf.com/

http://www.procope.com/

http://www.laduree.fr/

Architecture and My Favorite Places

Jenny Carless is filling in for Supriya this week. Jenny is  a nonfiction writer, amateur wildlife photographer, and novelist-in-training who blogged with us in January about her passion for safaris in Kenya.

I hadn’t really noticed, until I sat down to write this post, how much I associate the places I love—and those on my list to visit—with their architecture.

When I think of Paris, for example, I picture Sacré Coeur, perched atop Montmartre. I first saw the basilica from somewhere far across the city, through misty skies as day evaporated into night. The pale monolith seemed to glow, and from then on, I’ve always thought of Sacré Coeur as a sort of ethereal guardian, keeping watch over the city. 

Sacre Coeur
Photo by Tonchino

For many people, I suspect, mention London’s architecture, and the Big Ben clock tower or St. Paul’s Cathedral comes to mind. Of course, today, people’s first association might be “the Gherkin” (formally, 30 St. Mary Axe) or the London Eye—two more recent iconic additions to the cityscape.

"The Gherkin"
Photo by Aurelien Guichard

I tend to think of several less well known structures around the city. When I lived in Notting Hill (West London) and worked in the World Trade Center (East London), I had one of the best commutes ever: My route included Marble Arch, Buckingham Palace, Admiralty Arch, and Tower Bridge, not to mention Hyde Park and Green Park. This wonderful drive across is still etched in my mind as a very fond memory.

When we think Egypt, our most common images are the pyramids and the Great Sphinx. San Francisco? The Golden Gate Bridge and the Transamerica Pyramid. Thoughts of Sydney, Australia bring to mind the Harbor Bridge and the Sydney OperaHouse.

The chicken or the egg?

Am I drawn to a place because its architecture appeals to me, or does the architecture appeal to me because it somehow reflects a culture I’m already drawn to?

Certainly we recognize that architecture is often symbolic of a culture or a particular time. For example, would the Eiffel Tower, with its giant lattice girders representing the age of modern engineering and science, have been built at any other time? Likewise, the fantastical creations of Antoni Gaudí in Barcelona (and elsewhere) are icons of a particular time, place, and political movement.

Antoni Gaudi's Casa Batllo
Photo by Massimo Catarinella

The Centre Georges Pompidou represents, according to its website, “a constraint-free architecture in the spirit of the 1960s.” In the late 1970s, when the building had been open just a year or two, its ultra-modern appearance, smack in the heart of one of Paris’s oldest areas, the Marais, caused something of a scandal. Today, it hardly seems shocking.

So what will people centuries or millennia from now think about some of our modern buildings (assuming some still stand)? What will their impressions be of Burj Al Arab (the famous “sailboat building”) in Dubai, for example?

Burj al Arab
Photo by Tintoni Thomas

What about the Kansas City Public Library’s nifty “hardcover” façades? Although, with the proliferation of ebooks, future observers may not even understand what those book spines are!

Kansas City Public Library
Photo by Jonathan Moreau

Nature’s Architecture

I can’t sign off without mentioning the forms we see in nature—nature’s architecture, I suppose you could say. Natural forms are equally enticing to me, and I think we all associate places with their natural architecture as much, if not more, than their human-made counterparts. Just think of some of the best-known natural wonders: Mount Everest, Victoria Falls, or the Grand Canyon. 

In addition to its beauty or grandeur, the natural architecture of a place is an essential element to its character. I visited Ol Pejeta Conservancy in Laikipia, Kenya for the first time last October. There, Mount Kenya (the country’s tallest mountain and Africa’s second tallest, after Kilimanjaro) is an inescapable presence. All Kenyans are immensely proud of Mount Kenya, and many Kenyans believe that it is God’s throne, or resting place, on earth. We turned to the mountain first thing every morning, to see what colors the sunrise would paint it, and we watched it fade into the dusk every evening.

Mount Kenya
Photo by Jenny Carless

Which touches you more—human-made architecture or nature’s architecture? What are some of your favorite examples?

Murder at the Lanterne Rouge: A Conversation With Cara Black

Our guest this week is Cara Black the author of the best-selling and award-nominated Aimée Leduc Investigation mystery series, set in Paris. Last year, she chatted with me about her novel, Murder in Passy, and today we discuss her latest release, Murder at the Lanterne Rouge. To learn more about Cara and her books, check out her website at http://carablack.com/. On Tuesdays, she can be found blogging about France at http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/.

We are also running a contest this week. Leave a comment on this post between now and Thursday, April 5, for a chance to win a copy of Cara’s 2011 novel, Murder in Passy. The contest will end at midnight EST, and we'll announce the winner on the blog on Friday.

Cara, Murder at the Lanterne Rouge is Aimée’s twelfth adventure, set in one of Paris’s four Chinatowns. What can you tell us about this neighborhood? What made you pick it as the setting for this story?

Paris has four Chinatowns, and this one, set in the Marais, has a lot of interesting history. It has buildings dating back to the 14^th-century, and even the Resistance had a presence there during World War II. Chinese immigrants came in the early 20^th century, replacing the aristocrats when they moved out of the quartier. Some of China’s revolutionaries were attracted by France’s principles of liberté, egalité, fraternité. They included Lin Biao, Mao’s right-hand man, and Deng Xiaoping, who succeeded Mao. Another radical in Paris was the Vietnamese leader, Ho Chi Minh, who worked in a socialist/communist restaurant.

I knew a man who worked for the Renseignements Genereaux, a domestic intelligence agency that runs wire taps and conducts surveillance on suspects. His job was to collect intelligence in Chinatown, and one day, over coffee, he said, “No one ever dies in Chinatown.”

Where did that come from, I wondered. So I pressed him. “What do you mean?”

He said, “You’re a writer. You figure it out.” So I started thinking, If no one died there, then what?

What is the significance of the Lanterne Rouge in the novel’s title?

Lanterne Rouge means red lantern, and these lanterns hang in the doorways of Chinatown. The murder occurs under a red lantern. That’s all the reference means. I learned that the last person to finish the Tour de France carries a red lantern, although that has nothing to do with the story. Red lanterns are also a symbol of Chinese New Year, which is the time of year when the novel takes place.

We’ve talked in the past about the hands-on research you like to do – plying police officers with wine and coffee or crawling through Parisian sewers – all in the interest of authenticity. What did it take for you to absorb the gritty realism of Chinatown’s underworld? Did you visit any of the sweatshops that appear in the story?

I’ve visited sweatshops in San Francisco’s Chinatown, but not the ones in Paris. But I have a friend who lives near the building where the sweatshop in the book is located, over a night club that is no longer there. A real sweatshop existed there and we could look down into the rooms from my friend’s window and see the machines inside. There is a German bunker nearby, which Aimee explores in the book, and I was able to visit that and see all the artifacts left over from the war.

Several characters in the novel are graduates of an an engineering school called the Conservatoire National des Arts et Métiers. They call themselves the Gadz’ Arts and practice a special form of hazing. Is this school and the rituals its students practice real?

I met a graduate of this school, a grande ecole, mentioned in the story. He lives in Silicon Valley now and is an entrepreneur. He told me about the hazing rituals that the graduates of the grandes ecoles do. I toned the rituals down a lot in the book because they were too brutal, fictionalized certain things. But the school and the rituals are real. The students learn a special language – they take it all very seriously. It’s a cool thing for them. The Conservatoire National des Arts et Metiers is the third top ranking engineering school in France.

One of the settings in the novel is an old tower that once belonged to the Knights Templar. Is there a story behind the way you found it?

Whenever I’m in Paris, I do a lot of walking around. Just exploring the city and seeing what I’ll find. I found the tower this way. It had walls several feet thick. You can see them from the adjacent buildings, which have walls remaining from the tower. I went inside and offered the people there macaroons, which they welcomed very much. They didn’t know much about the history, but they let me see the place.

I’m always delighted to see more of Aimée’s sidekick, René Friant, who is small of stature and big of heart. He plays a central role in this novel. Can you tell us a bit about that?

René has long had feelings for Aimée, but his love is unrequited. She sees him as her best friend, not romantically. He’s resigned, and moves on by falling in love with Meizi, a Chinese girl. Aimée is concerned about him. She’s worried and, for a change, feels responsible for him. So when Meizi disappears and is suspected in the murder, Aimée just wants to find her and sort everything out.

Aimée has many fine qualities, but commitment to a long-term relationship is not one of them. Yet her current squeeze, the homicide detective Melac, has been around for several books now and shows no sign of giving up on her. Is her luck in love changing?

I can’t tell you. I really don’t know. A relationship is always a hard thing for me to write in a book. And Aimée has broken her rule by falling for a cop. A cop boyfriend in a mystery is a problem because the cop can’t just tell the sleuth what she needs to know. Melac has to keep things from Aimée, which is a strain on their relationship.

I enjoy the glimpses of Parisian life that you give us through your books as Aimée zips around Paris on her Vespa or pops into a café to meet an informant. Do you wander around Paris with a little notebook jotting down everything you see? Or do these images just stick in your mind?

I write everything down. I carry notebooks around and record street sounds, conversations on busses. I stick a digital recorder in a carrying bag and ride around. Then, when I’m home, the sounds help me get back to the moment, so I can make it all real to the reader.

Cara, thanks for chatting with me today.

Off the Beaten Track: Murder in Passy--A Conversation with Cara Black

Cara Black is back! A few months ago, she chatted with me about her best-selling and award-nominated Aimée Leduc Investigation series, set in Paris. Today, we discuss her latest novel, Murder in Passy, which was released earlier this month. To learn more about Cara and her books, visit her website at http://carablack.com/. On Tuesdays, she can be found blogging about France at http://murderiseverywhere.blogspot.com/. And check out her earlier interview with me here at Novel Adventurers.

 

Cara, in Aimée’s latest adventure, things get very personal for her. Can you briefly tells us what the book is about?

Aimée's concerned when Morbier, her godfather and police commissaire, asks a favor—a personal one concerning his haut bourgoise girlfriend, Xavierre, who lives in village-like Passy in the chic 16th arrondissement. After Xavierre's murder, Morbier is a suspect. Determined to vindicate him, Aimée's investigation leads to Basque ETA nationalists, police corruption, and a kidnapped Spanish princess.

 

In all your novels, the arrondissements where the stories are set become a character in the book. Passy is no different. Can you tell us something about this neighborhood, it’s history, and what sets it apart from other parts of Paris?

Passy is like a village enclave nestled in this residential and very exclusive district. The type of district where the maids wear pearls, Heidi :). But before Passy was incorporated into Paris in 1860, it was in the suburbs, outside Paris. A village where Empress Eugenie, Napoleon III's wife, took the Passy curative waters and where Balzac hid, escaping his creditors and writing some of his more than one hundred novels.

Unlike much of Paris, Passy closes up early at night and contains some of the highest priced real estate in the world. But there's an old world feeling, a little stuffy and conservative. Yet if you scratch underneath, you find a feeling of community: this village where everyone knows one another.

There is a Basque theme in this story. What is the Basque connection to Passy?

I discovered a Basque Cultural Center had existed in Passy, near the police station—a 30’s style commissariat—and Basques had a history of living in Passy. A thread existed (now the Center's moved away), but the stories I heard about their festivals and cultural activities interested me and pointed to a more diverse Passy than just the upper crust. 

The bad guys in Murder in Passy belong to the Basque separatist group, ETA, of Spain. Who are they and what do they hope to accomplish?

ETA is the militant extremist wing that splintered off from the Basque Nationalist Party. In the 60's, 70's, people were sympathetic to Basque nationalism, since Franco, then dictator of Spain, outlawed it and persecuted Basques who wanted autonomy. But soon the Basque Nationalists disavowed the bombings and threats of terror, saying that the Basqueland should be legitimized without violence. The Basque language is revered, and the “home” Basqueland straddling Spain and France is distinct and has been for centuries. In Murder in Passy, the ETA use violence as a rationale for political activism—but is it really that or an excuse? I've got many Basque friends who call themselves nationalists and want a separate homeland but refuse to sanction violence and feel ETA hurts their cause.

You do a lot of hands-on research for your books. How did you approach your investigations into Basque culture and ETA? Did you visit the Basqueland or interview members of the organization?

Yes, Heidi, and that opened my eyes to the conflict Basques in France and Spain feel over ETA. I visited Bilbao, St. Jean de Luz, Bayonne, and Biarritz and love the warmth, generosity, and humanity of those I met. Some of them had been imprisoned for seven years by Franco in the 70's, one woman even on death row, who was pardoned when Franco died. This marked them for life, but even after their harrowing experiences, they work in the system now to legitimately change the government and to uphold Basque autonomy.

I know you like to get down and dirty when you explore the settings in your books (crawling through Paris sewers and such). In Murder in Passy, you have some very exciting scenes set in the tunnels beneath the Passy reservoir. What was it like exploring these passageways, and did you already have the scenes in your head while you went through the tunnels?

Heidi, when I explored those tunnels and heard the stories of the French Gestapo torturing people underground I just knew I had to use it in the book. The underground tunnels are an even temperature, a bit damp and just massive windings and twistings and turnings under arches of old stone. I felt strange things emanating from what I later learned had been a torture area....

A mysterious law-enforcement outfit called the EPIGN makes an appearance in this book. Who are they and what is their mission?

The EPIGN are military, elite-trained anti-terrorist, recovery and extraction units. Liken them to our Delta Force or Navy Seals. The crème de la crème. 

Aimée does not have a lot of luck in love, does she? Any chance that she will meet Monsieur Right?

Oh, Heidi, it's never easy for Aimée. The girl has a penchant for bad boys, what can I say?

What is next for Aimée ?

I'm in edits now for next March—Murder at the Lantern Rouge!

I’m looking forward to that one. Thanks for chatting with me again, Cara!

Thanks for having me back, Heidi.

A Tour of Paris with Cara Black

My guest today is Cara Black, author of the best-selling and award-nominated Aimée Leduc Investigation mystery series, set in Paris. Her novels delve deep in the city’s history, social conflicts and cultural diversity, while also delivering a thrilling, satisfying mystery. Cara lives in San Francisco with her husband, a bookseller, and their teenage son. She is a San Francisco Library Laureate and a member of the Paris Sociéte Historique in the Marais. Her next Aimée Leduc novel, Murder in Passy, will be released in March. To learn more about Cara and her books, check out her website at http://carablack.com/. On Tuesdays, she can be found blogging about France at Murder Is Everywhere.

Cara, the city of Paris is as much a character in your books as the people who populate it. Why did you pick Paris as a setting? Or did it pick you?

Sometimes I think Paris picked me. I was passionate to tell this story that became my first book, Murder in the Marais, it was as if it had to be done, to be written. Or maybe it’s the other way round, too. I wanted to read about present day Paris. A contemporary view that portrayed a city that I saw—seductive, full of contradictions, history—and I couldn’t find books like this. At least translated into English.

You set each of your books in a different Parisian neighborhood, and each story feels uniquely suited to that part of Paris. How did you research these settings?

These neighborhoods were villages that over centuries became incorporated into the ever expanding Paris. I’m always looking for that ambiance, what makes that district unique. So I read historical accounts, biographies, go to the archives, consult old phone books, join historical associations of that district. Get friendly with a local cafe owner, the kiosk vender, the kid who’s tagging buildings. Find out the weather of that time, the traditions, holidays everything that would be happening then. I consult newspapers of the day, to get the flavor, what was on sale that day, or happening in the news, the traffic. I tape-record conversations in the cafés, on buses, on the streets to get the sounds. I’ve visited the Morgue, gone into the sewers, the abandoned Metro stations, the underground quarries in the Latin Quarter.

Your stories all have a social or political theme that is connected to the Paris neighborhoods where they are set. What comes first for you: the theme or the setting?

The setting! I will have to “live” there for a year or more while writing the book, so I need to be drawn to this particular part of Paris, be curious about this quartier, feel a compulsion to understand it, get the ambiance. Also I need to discover how a crime would occur there and why. I want to explore the side of Paris that people don’t visit on the usual tourist route, the “real” Paris that I see, changing evolving and dealing with France’s colonial legacy, the past.

You’ve said that you made your protagonist, Aimée Leduc, half American because you yourself are not French. Yet she feels very French. How did you get into Aimée’s head and way of thinking?

Thank you. I might see a shop window and think Aimée would wear that, or she’d drive that scooter. She’s a lot like some of my French friends who are witty, warm, smart, and attractive and still have trouble with men...imagining that it gives us all hope. But to me Aimée is a contemporary young Parisienne like so many I see or know who have to pay bills, walk their dog and deal with life and men. Sometimes I just open her purse and find what could be inside, or put her in a café interrogating someone and she comes alive.

You’ve created a compelling side-kick in Aimée’s partner, René Friant. Why did you make him a dwarf?

Dwarves occupied a strange place in European history, in carnivals and at the royal court. But I wanted to show that René, a man with what people deemed disabilities, had amazing capabilities. Instead of just looking from the outside, seeing him as a “little man”, he has these incredible computer talents. And a black belt. I hope it makes for a character rich with possibilities.

Do you have a favorite experience or encounter with someone who helped you in researching one of your books?

There are so many. For me it’s about going to Paris, absorbing the feeling, the place, and hearing the stories. There’s a friend who lives in the 16th arrondissement and for years has nudged me to write about her “hood” - but it didn't seem  my kind of place, or Aimée's. Too chic, too ancien regime, etc. But my friend took me for walks and showed me Guimard’s buildings, the Marmottan Museum, and tried to open my eyes. We actually one day stood in front of a gorgeous place and saw on the plaque that Berthe Morisot, the painter, had lived there. We walked inside, since the door was open, and looked around the courtyard until the concierge, who must have been very bored, spoke with us then invited us in to Berthe’s old studio. Amazing, threadbare and very ancien regime, old wealthy French but full of light. But it was the trip to the Passy reservoir that I talked my way into which became a scene in the book. The woman from Eau de Paris took me under the tunnels in the reservoir that the French Gestapo used for torture. Chilling. My friend's aunt insisted that Passy was a village, I just had to find it and she proceeded to show it to me. Through her eyes, I discovered Passy.

Leduc Investigations specializes in computer crimes. Why did you pick that specialty?

Computer security was a brand new field when I started writing, very cutting edge and, if you can believe it, only 3 firms in the U.S. in 1994 actually worked in this field. No Google until 1998, if you can remember. So I thought how cool is that if Aimée would be a computer forensics detective and be totally bleeding edge in technology. Not a field I, or many of us understood at the time. She’d have access through her computer skills to find out information in a different way and use that as a tool. Lots of hackers I’ve met and interviewed gave me ideas but they’ve always said “social engineering” is still the foremost and most effective. You can spend time to hack into a site, but like Aimée you could flirt and get someone’s password, bypassing a tech step and make it more real.

How do you research the law enforcement side of your books? Do you have contacts with the Paris police?

Yes, and I ply my police contacts with dinner and wine. I run a lot of ideas by them, ask if it could be plausible at that time and really appreciate their input. One inspector actually said, I spend time with you because I want you to get it right. My books aren’t police procedurals, Aimée’s a licensed PI who’s gone into computer security, but since police are involved I want the details right. And the French system is so different. In November I toured 36 quai des Orfèvres, the Police Prefecture, went up on the roof and to the room where they dry the scene of the crime clothes. The best part was going out and drinking with the homicide captain and going to a police shooting at the range - not in that order :). I’ve consulted French attorneys about adoption for my book Murder on Ile Saint Louis, and know several female licensed PI’s who help me with the nuts and bolts of running a detective agency.

Your next book, Murder in Passy, will be released in March. What can you tell us about Aimée’s next adventure?

This gets personal for Aimée and takes her to the chic 16th arrondissement where the maids wear pearls. When Xavierre d’Eslay, a haut bourgeois of Basque origin is murdered outside her home in the exclusive village-like quartier of Passy, circumstantial evidence makes Aimée’s godfather a suspect. Was it a crime of passion, connected to Basque terrorists or linking to a kidnapped Spanish princess?

Paris has twenty arrondissements, or districts. What will you do once you’ve finished setting a book in each of them? Retire? Or will you start another series?

Heidi, I’m thinking of a historical thriller. But I’ve got eight more arrondissements to go in Paris.

Cara, thank you so much for giving us such a fascinating behind-the-scenes look at Aimée’s world!