Read Cara Black's Newest Mystery – Then Join Her on a Trip to Paris

By SHARON BADER

Guest contributor

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Bonjour, fans of Cara Black!

Her 15th mystery, MURDER ON THE CHAMP DE MARS, pits protagonist Aimée Leduc's new maternal instincts against her determination to finally solve the mystery surrounding her father's murder. The story unfolds in 1999 in the seventh arrondissement or neighborhood, of Paris, home to the elite of the city.

The spark that enflames the investigation is the appearance of Nicu, a French gypsy boy (manouche). He convinces Aimée to go with him to see his dying mother, who wants to undo a past injustice by revealing a secret that involves Aimée's father's death.

But, when Aimée and Nicu arrive at the hospital, the boy's mother has vanished and cannot survive for long without the medicines and procedures necessary to keep her alive. When Nicu is killed, Aimée
becomes determined to find his murderer and the trail threads through the mysterious world of gypsies and their tragic history during the Holocaust.

The investigation complicates Aimée's personal life, of course, since she is a new mother battling sleep deprivation and guilt over not spending enough time with her daughter. The christening of baby Chloé when she is six months old brings about an unexpected reappearance of Melac, the baby's father, and his new wife who want joint custody. The dichotomy between the roles of single motherhood and investigator adds a new dimension to this well-loved character and her stories.

And, as if this new book were not treat enough, you could actually go to Paris with Cara Black November 1-7, 2015. For information on the trip, sponsored by DC’s bookstore, Politics and Prose, go to politics-prose.com.

In an interview with Ron Charles in The Washington Post (1/9/15), Black said these trips are a fun and creative way to get to know her readers. “I love that people want to travel with me to Aimée’s Paris,” she said. “They want to go down the cobbled backstreets, see where Aimée lives on Ile Saint-Louis, visit her haunts and follow in her steps on an investigation.”

Charles writes: “Touring museums and enjoying French food sounds like a dream, but Black will be thinking about her next novel, too. ‘When I’m in Paris, I’m always working,’ she said. ‘Everything is fodder: finding a route that Aimée would take, a place to put a body (that’s always crucial), going to the archives and historical libraries, finding a turn-of-the-century Paris phone book at the flea market and lugging it back on the Metro, chatting to the bus driver when I get lost.’”

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Sharon Bader stepped into the literary world by writing and publishing poetry in high school and college. Life intervened, requiring more technical types of writing, but now she is now pursuing literary adventures, creating fiction in short stories and novels.