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08 November 2015

Claude Izner's Murder On The Eiffel Tower

A big thanks goes out to NetGalley and especially to Gallic Books for giving me the opportunity to read Murder On The Eiffel Tower at no cost. Gallic is also the publishing house that introduced me to The Poisoning Angel. I'm already loading up my TBR with more titles from their publication list (in fact, my next read is also thanks to them & NetGalley!) -- and their upcoming Aardvark Bureau imprint. 

Before I get too carried away oohing and aahing over more Jean Teulé's and book titles involving phantoms and elves and hedgehogs, let's get on with a little ramble about the first in the Victor Legris series from Claude Izner (who is actually Liliane Korb and her sister Laurence Korb Lefèvre). I made the mistake and glanced at the Goodreads score for the book when I was adding it to my shelf and was a little disheartened over the lowness of it ... until I remembered that Goodreads has a whole bunch of silly people on it who likely wouldn't know a good book if it bit them in the ankle. 
   

Victor Legris is a bookseller and amateur photographer in 1889 Paris. The World Exposition is happening and, as part of that, the debut of the Eiffel Tower. A woman dies from a supposed bee sting on the Tower at the same time Legris is there to meet with his friends about an upstart newspaper. As it turns out there may be something more sinister to it than a simple bee sting as similar deaths happen. Legris already has his hands full with running the bookstore and dealing with his married lover. Now, on top of those, he has a newspaper that wants him to write for them, a crush on the newspaper's cartoonist, and possible murders that may be linked to someone close to him. While the mystery aspect of the book fell a bit flat for me, I loved the historical aspects and the richness of the details surrounding Paris and the Expo. It felt almost as though the book was written as a straight historical look at Paris and the Expo and then the mystery storyline and characters were tossed in after the fact. I kept hoping for a little more about the characters and that Victor would stop being quite so flighty. It was enjoyable enough, though, that I have already checked with my public library to see if I can get the next book in the series!

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

You're the only one I know outside of the French Literature group who has read this!

I've read the first four. Enjoyed them all with 2 and 3 being my favorites so far. Artist Toulouse-Lautrec shows up in #3, The Montmartre Investigation! One of the group members who lives in France mentioned, I think it was when we were reading The Montmartre Investigation, that what she especially loved about the series was that the city of Paris was like a character in the book.

You will get more about the characters in later books, quite a bit more.

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