Aimée Leduc, a Parisian private investigator, has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation—no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an old Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she was expecting. When she goes to drop off her findings at her client's house in the Marais, Paris's historic Jewish quarter, she finds the old woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous crime, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.

Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc has been framed for the murder of her daughter’s father—now she’s on the lam, and must find the real killer to clear her name in this thrilling 21st installment of Cara Black’s New York Times bestselling mystery series.Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc doesn’t know that her life is about to be upended. Her ex, Melac, has been hounding her to move their daughter, Chloé, to Brittany. Aimée is fed up with his threats to take her to court and has stopped answering his calls. Which is why she doesn’t know he’s waiting for her by the Bassin de la Villette as she leaves a client’s office late one night. When she finds him there, bleeding in the canal, he has just been stabbed by an assailant, who knocks Aimée unconscious and plants the bloody knife in her hands.Now Aimée is in police custody, debilitated by a concussion, with...

In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light—abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why. The New York Times bestselling author of the Aimée Leduc investigations reimagines history in her masterful, pulse-pounding spy thriller, Three Hours in Paris. Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the Führer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands. When Kate misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life—all the...

This riveting 20th installment entangles Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft and terrorist threats in Paris's 15th arrondissement. November 2001: in the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of fear. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory—and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosives under his fingernails.Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. In an effort to prove this, she battles the police and his own lab colleagues, collecting conflicting eyewitness reports. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an...

Cara Black's riveting 18th installment in her New York Times bestselling Parisian detective series entangles private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft, post-colonial Franco-African politics, people's resistance movements, and neighborhood secrets in Paris's ancient and artisanal yet tech-centric 12th arrondissement. Aimée Leduc is about to go onstage to give the keynote address at a tech conference that is sure to secure Leduc Detective some much-needed business contracts when she gets an emergency phone call from her infant daughter's playgroup: Aimée's own mother, who was supposed to pick Chloe up, never showed. Abandoning her hard-won speaking gig, Aimée rushes to get Chloe, annoyed that, yet again, her mother has let her down. But as Aimée and Chloe are leaving the playground, Aimée witnesses the body of a homeless woman being wheeled away from the neighboring...

It is once again up to American markswoman Kate Rees to take the shot that just might win—or lose—World War II, in the followup to national bestseller Three Hours in Paris.Three missions. Two cities. One shot to win the war.October 1942: it’s been two years since Kate Rees was sent to Paris on a British Secret Service mission to assassinate Hitler. Since then, she has left spycraft behind to take a training job as a sharpshooting instructor in the Scottish Highlands. But her quiet life is violently disrupted when Colonel Stepney, her former handler, drags her back into the fray for a risky three-pronged mission in Paris.Each task is more dangerous than the next: Deliver a package of forbidden biological material. Assassinate a high-ranking German operative whose knowledge of invasion plans could turn the tide of the war against the Allies. Rescue a British agent who once saved Kate’s life—and get out.Kate will encounter...

The eighteenth mystery in the New York Times bestselling Parisian detective series! A dying man drags his oxygen machine into the office of Eric Besson, a lawyer in Paris's 13th arrondissement. The old man, an accountant, is carrying a dilapidated notebook full of meticulous investment records. For decades he has been helping a cadre of dirty cops launder stolen money. The notebook contains his full confession—he's waited 50 years to make it, and now it can't wait another day. He is adamant that Besson get the notebook into the hands of La Proc, Paris's chief prosecuting attorney, so the corruption can finally be brought to light. But en route to La Proc, Besson's courier—his assistant and nephew—is murdered, and the notebook disappears. Grief-stricken Eric Besson tries to hire private investigator Aimée Leduc to find the notebook, but she is reluctant to get involved. Her father was a cop, and was murdered by the same dirty syndicate the notebook implicates. She’s not sure which she’s more afraid of, the dangerous men who would kill for the notebook or the idea that her father’s name might be among the dirty cops listed within it. Ultimately that’s the reason she must take the case, which leads her across the Left Bank, from the Cambodian enclave of Khmer Rouge refugees to the ancient royal tapestry factories to the modern art galleries.

From Publishers WeeklyFull of French political intrigue, Black's atmospheric 11th Aimée Leduc investigation (after 2010's Murder in the Palais Royal) finds the Paris PI's world turned upside down with the arrest of her godfather and longtime mentor, Commissaire Morbier, for murder. Worse yet, the victim—Morbier's inamorata, Xavierre d'Eslay—was with Aimée minutes before her death by strangulation. To clear Morbier, Aimée must dig deep as his fellow officers close rank and refuse to cooperate. Helping Aimée are her detective agency partner, René; her cousin, Sebastian; and her former policeman lover, Melac, who may or may not have an agenda of his own during the investigation. Though Xavierre lived a life of privilege in the posh suburb of Passy, Aimée discovers her past is shrouded in secrecy, linked to Basque separatists and terrorist acts. While the characters and their motivations can sometimes be hard to follow, the plot builds to a satisfying conclusion. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved. ReviewPraise for the Aimée Leduc series: “No contemporary writer of noir mysteries evokes the spirit of Paris more than Cara Black in her atmospheric series starring P.I. Aimée Leduc.... Fearless, risk-taking Aimée is constantly running, hiding, fighting and risking her life—all while dressed in vintage Chanel and Dior and Louboutin heels.”—_USA Today_ “If you’ve never been to Paris, or you’d like to go back soon, let Cara Black transport you there.”—Linda Fairstein “Black does for Paris what Dashiell Hammett did for San Francisco. She makes the city shimmer.”—_Plain Dealer_ (Cleveland) “Charming.... Aimée is one of those blithe spirits who can walk you through the city’s historical streets and byways with their eyes closed.”—_The New York Times Book Review_ “Leduc has such a thorough grasp of the practicalities of investigation, plus a penchant for undercover work that will have readers on pins and needles.”—_San Francisco Chronicle_

Praise for the Aimée Leduc series: "If you've always wanted to visit Paris, skip the air fare and read Cara Black . . . instead."--Val McDermid "Fine characters, good suspense, but, best of all, they are transcendentally, seductively, irresistibly French. If you can't go, these will do fine. Or, better, go and bring them with you."--Alan Furst "She makes Paris come alive as no one else has since Georges Simenon."--Stuart Kaminsky "If you've never been to Paris, or you'd like to go back soon, let Cara Black transport you there."--Linda Fairstein "Charming. . . . Aimée is one of those blithe spirits who can walk you through the city's historical streets and byways with their eyes closed."--The New York Times Book Review Aimée's childhood friend, Laure, is a policewoman. Her partner, Jacques, has set up a meeting in Montmartre with an informer. When Laure reluctantly goes along as backup, Jacques is lured...

Paris, July 1999: Private investigator Aimée Leduc is coming home from a long day's work in St. Germain, where she is investigating a computer security breach at a university, when she is accosted by an acquaintance who once did her a big favor. Suzanne Lesage is a Brigade Criminelle agent on an elite counterterrorism squad who has been working undercover in the former Yugoslavia, hunting down dangerous war criminals for the Hague. Now Suzanne is back in Paris and is convinced she's being stalked by a ghost—a Serbian warlord responsible for hundreds of murders, a man her team thought they had killed. Her boss thinks she's just suffering PTSD and has put her on desk duty. Suzanne begs Aimée to investigate—is it possible that Mirko Vladic is in Paris with a blood vendetta? Aimée already has a lot on her plate—an eight-month-old baby to take care of, a huge case that she needs to prioritize so she can pay her detective agency's bills....

Praise for the Aimée Leduc series set in Paris: "Compelling. . . . Aimée makes an engaging protagonist, vulnerable beneath her vintage chic clothing and sharp-witted exterior."--Publishers Weekly (starred review) "Charming. . . . Aimée is one of those blithe spirits who can walk you through the city's historical streets and byways with their eyes closed."--The New York Times Book Review "The buzz is partly about her heroine's hip, next-generation, cutting-edge investigations and partly about Paris, a setting of unrivaled charm."--Houston Chronicle "Cara Black books are good companions. . . . Fine characters, good suspense, but, best of all, they are transcendentally, seductively, irresistibly French. If you can't go, these will do fine. Or, better yet, go and bring them with you."--Alan Furst "Conveys vividly those layers of history that make the stones of Paris sing for so many of...

Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It's not her fault if she can't suppress her doubts about the relationship; René is moving way too fast, and Aimée's instincts tell her Meizi, this supposed love of René's life, isn't trustworthy. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway--with Meizi's photo in his wallet.Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can't figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi's disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France's secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they're keeping tabs on Aimée. A missing young woman, an illegal immigrant raid in progress,...

When a mysterious visitor promises contact with her long-lost mother, Aimée Leduc finds herself hot on the trail of the Seventies radicals with whom her mother was evidently associated. The result is not just good suspense but an affecting and realistic psychological study of a daughter's coming to terms with an absent parent. This is another high-class mystery from Black, whose previous works in the series ( Murder in Belleville ,  Murder in the Marais ) have the same indelible sense of place and sophisticated political context.

"Cara Black books are good companions, and Murder in the Bastille especially so. Fine characters, good suspense, but, best of all, they are transcendentally, seductively, irresistibly French. If you can't go, these will do fine. Or, better, go and bring them with you."--Alan Furst "Charming. . . . Aimée is one of those blithe spirits who can walk you through the city's historical streets and byways with their eyes closed."--Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review "Paris is one of my favorite cities in all the world; Black's books are a fine way to revisit it."-- New Orleans Times-Picayune

Aimée Leduc is happy her long-time business partner René has found a girlfriend. Really, she is. It's not her fault if she can't suppress her doubts about the relationship; René is moving way too fast, and Aimée's instincts tell her Meizi, this supposed love of René's life, isn't trustworthy. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never comes back to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway--with Meizi's photo in his wallet. Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can't figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi's disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France's secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they're keeping tabs on Aimée. A missing young woman, an illegal immigrant raid in progress,...