A Murder In Paris
- Amanda Llwyd
- Aug 7
- 2 min read
by Matthew Blake
SYNOPSIS
WHAT IF A MEMORY COULD GET YOU KILLED?
Imagine the past returning to you in fragments.
A hotel room, a pillow, a lifeless body.
Your ordinary, innocent life upended by one flash of memory.
You can’t remember what led to the crime.
All you know is that you must return to the scene, to the clues that lie waiting in Room 11.
But this is a mystery that goes far beyond that room, that night, that murder.
Are you ready to unlock the truth?
REVIEW
A Murder In Paris begins with the famous artist, Josephine Benoit, turning up at the luxurious Hôtel Lutetia to make a terrible confession. Dr Olivia Finn is a psychotherapist and is called to Paris to help her Grandmother as the police are struggling to work out how much of what she is saying is true, and how much is as a result of her dementia and memories becoming confused. Olivia has to look into the past to try and discover the truth but the closer she gets, the more she realises that the information she is uncovering could totally change her entire family history as well as putting her in immediate danger. Matthew Blake has written another complex and multi-layered psychological thriller with a strong focus on psychology and memory. The dual timeline format works really well as it slowly adds more and more pieces of the puzzle together, while at the same time giving completely different perspectives on the story.
It was such a brilliant idea to set parts of the narrative in Paris during 1945 at the end of the War. The disorder and confusion of a population trying to return to some kind of normality after witnessing such horrific events created the perfect atmosphere for the story. Then, the present day sections showed the contrast by bringing in the Parisian art, the hotel, the opera, but still keeping a definite darkness to combine the different storylines.
This is a story about art, power, family, loss, suffering, war, mystery and identity. It's got the Police Procedural feel that I love mixed with the unreliable narrator element. There are so many reasons for Olivia to not trust anyone around her or anything they are telling her which means that she can only rely on herself to solve the mystery. An interesting and action-packed story with a fascinating historical twist!
Thanks to Anne Cater - @RandomTTours, Matthew Blake @Matthew__Blake and Harper Fiction @HarperFiction for the opportunity to read and review.
Publisher: Harper Fiction Genre: Psychological Thriller
ISBN: 978-0008607845
Pages: 368pp
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