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Lenaribka

Lenaribka

"We should read to give our souls a chance to luxuriate."

 

~Henry Miller

Currently reading

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Murder on the Champs-Élysées

Murder on the Champs-Élysées - Alex Mandon Quite enjoyable and very atmospheric

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As always it is difficult to review a mystery novel without giving something away, and I really don’t want to spoil you a pleasure of an exciting guessing game, but you have to be in the first place a lover of a historical mystery, because, in spite of presence of a love affair that has a huge potential to grow into a serious love relationship, The Belle-Époque Mysteries, is not MM romance but an accurately researched historical mystery.

Alex Mandon offers not only a well-written entertaining plot, but also a wonderful feeling of the time and the setting. With so many lovely details and interesting insights into society’s norms of Paris at the end of the nineteenth century.

When Monsieur Paul Bacard, a wealthy young man, has been found dead in a hired fiacre – though men of his standing had their own modes of transport -carriages (often multiple ones) -there is no doubt that he was murdered. But who could benefit from his death and why?

If you enjoy old fashioned mystery novels where normally there are many suspects in the beginning of the investigation and which circle is reduced to a single one toward the end, and where with an unexpected last twist of the story all your brilliantly thought-out theories collapse like a house of cards, you will like this series.

I can’t wait for the next sequel, I look forward to meeting these great characters again:

Inspector Guillaume Devrè from la Suretè, the Parisian detective bureau – which has been started by a reformed criminal named Eugene Vidocq during the Napoleonic era – was the oldest and most respected one in the world. Our leading gay character, deep in the closet of course, considering the period of time

though sodomy wasn’t illegal and it occurred far more than most people would believe, inverts were seen as deviants and as having an inherent criminal nature.


But Devrè’s special knowledge could be very useful for some case.

Dr. Thomas Jackson, the American pathologist, the best in the whole Paris, eccentric workaholic who is more comfortable with corpses within the walls of his laboratory than among real people. He made me laugh, but he should learn to keep his mouth shut, mostly in regard to his job.

Èmile Huvet, the attractive family physician of a grande horizontale, a high society courtesan La Balise and her three female tenants and friends.

And of course La Balise herself, her mysterious past full of dark secrets.

I have a feeling, we’are going to have a lot of fun with this series!

Highly recommended.


A wonderful BR with my Sofia, as always :)

***ARC provided by the author to Gay Book Reviews in exchange for an honest review.

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