White Leopard by Laurent Guillaume

Laurent Guillaume is a former police officer and mobile commander in the Val de Marne section of Paris, southeast of the city. When he transferred to the DEA-like section of drug enforcement, he was stationed in Mali, Africa, where most of the drugs headed for Europe are transshipped. Guillaume sets this novel in Bamako, Mali and his main character, Souleymane Camara, is a private investigator formerly of the French police, living on the lam in Mali where he feels at home.

Camara is a light-skinned black man, not completely accepted in his native France, nor in Mali, which his father called home. He has a protector of sorts in the head of police in Bamako, a childhood friend of his father’s, and a background in crime detection, so he waits for trouble to come to him, working for clients needing help.

The opening sequence in this novel is so tightly written we are drawn in before we can spot what lies ahead. A French law student in financial troubles is unwitting courier to drug traffickers, and Camara is called in to extricate her. What we get are cartel-like deaths with chainsaws, a road trip through Mali along the Niger, an overnight in the open sleeping on top of the jeep, satellite phones and long-range camera lenses for finding out who is allowing the drugs into the country.

For readers who hope to travel the world in books, or read a book from every country, this should definitely go on your list. For readers who simply wish to know more about what is happening in Mali now, you will be pleased to have a glimpse behind the curtain with this fast-paced and realistic thriller. France has a long tradition of producing great mystery and thriller writers and this author is definitely on that list.

The smooth and fluent translation by Sophie Weiner makes this an easy recommend.


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Backstabbing in Beaujolais by Jean-Pierre Alaux & Noël Balen translated by Anne Trager

“Beaujolais is a lighthearted wine that makes people happy.”

We simply cannot ever have too many novels from France here in the U.S. and the publisher Le French Book is trying to bring those novels, translated, to market. Especially popular among the “cozy” mystery set is this series of novels set in the wine regions of France by Jean-Pierre Alaux and Noël Balen. We learn a great deal about wine production in each one, and the stories revolve around the great passions that wine evokes in producers and buyers…

This episode in the long-running mystery series manages to end before the body count exceeds two, and at the end everyone still alive is moving towards a fulfilling career or marriage. It is meant to be as lighthearted and refreshing as the wine it describes, and, for those with an interest in viticulture, it succeeds admirably.

“…moderate consumption [of red wine]—one glass a day for women and two for men—can be good for the health: reducing your risk of depression as well as your risk of developing colon cancer… Wine has anti-aging properties. While consumption of other alcoholic drinks can increase a woman’s chances of developing breast cancer, red wine in moderate amounts can actually lower that risk. One study has even found that a chemical found in wine can improve your sensitivity to insulin. That means you’re not as vulnerable to diabetes…”

While I am not convinced by the one study that suggests red wine might make one less vulnerable to diabetes, I believe the other claims have more solid scientific backing. But I was surprised, I admit, to learn

”You can drink Beaujolais early on, but the wines frequently open up three to five years after being bottled. They are precocious and aromatic, but round enough to have a lingering taste.

The story had the requisite homegrown local who harbored resentments against everyone, the millionaire businessman who wanted to bottle wine but knew nothing of the process, the gorgeously-dressed, slim, blond marketing wizard…you get the picture. One intriguing character, Benjamin, was a French wine expert who I could have sworn was British.

Beaujolais wines have a unique winemaking process call ‘whole-berry fermentation.’ The technique preserves the fruity quality without extracting tannins from the skins. The vintners in this novel considered “drawing out the vatting time and submerging the cap of grape skins during the maceration to enhance flavor and intensity, thinking it would preserve the fruity aromas and flavors while enhancing color and tannins. Who knows if it would have worked? They never got to try it, sadly.

“From time immemorial, [Beaujolais Nouveau] has been celebrated when it’s young, at the start of fermentation. Centuries ago winemakers traded early in the year, and the yeast would complete its job while the barrels were in transit, moving slowly by carriage or boat along the Saône and Rhône rivers or up the Loire.”

Beaujolais Nouveau commonly goes on sale in November and is meant to be enjoyed before May the following year. That goes for this novel, too. Enjoy!


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The City of Blood by Frédérique Molay

In the United States we do not see enough popular French fiction, French movies, French anything except perhaps scarves and sparkling water. The publisher Le French Book has taken it upon themselves to try and remedy that lack by publishing translations of the latest popular policier/mystery series. Wine or blood feature in many of the titles, which is perhaps as it should be. When you find yourself unable to enjoy life without something really French in your life, you might be willing to go out of your way to see what is on offer in the way of translations.

Frédérique Molay spent much of her career in politics but always harbored a desire to write. When the first book in the Nico Sirsky Paris Homicide series, The 7th Woman, was widely hailed in France in 2007, Molay started writing full time.

I note that there are readers who genuinely adore this series and "can’t get enough of Nico Sirsky." I am so glad Molay has found her audience. The good news (and the bad news) is that she should never get bored with writing this series because she has so much further to go in tightening the expression of tension and of sharing the internal and external conundrums of life as Chief of Police at 36 Quai des Orfèvres (the title of an unrelated French film, by the way, starring Daniel Auteuil and Gérard Depardieu). We learn that Sirsky is blond and blue-eyed, dresses well, and that he loves his wife and his mother. These things we can tell from the outside. Rarely do we get a look inside the mind of the "first-rate cop." Sirsky does not appear to suffer (yet) the debilitating addictions and depression that plague his brothers-in-arms: the many American and Scandinavian criminal investigators found in the pages of popular fiction.

The stunning and innovative ‘cultural park’ situated on Paris’s old meat-packing and abattoir district, Parc de la Villette, features in this novel. In direct opposition to Frederick Law Olmsted's view that a park should shield one from the city, this park brings the city into the park with an enormous discontinuous building envisioned as a single structure.

For those that have visited Paris, this location alone may evoke a strong sense of place. The murder Sirsky investigates would be familiar anywhere, but the element of homosexuality hinted at brings with it a whiff of revulsion that seems particularly French. It is fine to cheat, but emphatically not with a same-sex partner.

To earn my devotion to this series, Molay would have to slow down from the pressures of churning out a book every year or two and take the time to figure out how to add depth, color, and suspense to her stories. Sentences like this about a witness being questioned fill me with wonder: "She bit her lip and was blinking quickly, a telltale sign of anxiety." Editors should be able to fix a boring sentence, but no one but the author can breathe life into a character.


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The 7th Woman by Frédérique Molay

At the end of my review for The Prone Gunman by Manchette, I mentioned that I have been choosing things “French” over all others since watching the TV series Spiral on Netflix streaming. This latest read was Winner of France's prestigious Prix du Quai des Orfèvres for best crime fiction in 2007 and has won slightly higher marks on Goodreads than other winners of that prize in recent years. It is also one of the few that have been translated into English.

In this novel we are treated to a crime that looks remarkably like the one featured on Spiral, the TV series. The French are far more graphic on TV and perhaps in literature than is usually acceptable in America, so one has overcome one’s shock at the material before one can relax into the central mystery: who is doing such vicious things to women and why?

On the TV series I’d already learned the close relationship between prosecutors, investigating judges, and lawyers in the French system and how a victim must often face the perpetrator in the magistrate’s office so I could seamlessly enjoy the way Molay described the characters for each piece of the justice system and how they worked together. Any one of the above personages could be a stumbling block in reaching a just outcome, if they did not have the same goals.

And of course, in the TV movie we are treated to brilliant overhead and street shots of Paris and its neighborhoods, so when Molay mentions Place de la Bastille, the Place de la Republique, and the Cathédrale Notre Dame with its galerie des chimères, it is all a little easier to imagine.

That having been said, I don’t think the French are accustomed to police procedurals the way British, American, or even Scandinavian authors, screenwriters and audiences are since we would see many more of them if they were more commonly found. One writer on French cinema, however, says that there is a long tradition of gritty French police dramas that rival what we have in America. And of course, there have been great French crime writers like Dominique Manotti who have managed to create crime stories distinctly French, but I cannot understand why crime books are not more translated, if they are written at all. I sense Molay is trying something in the American style.

One observation I would make regarding this style is that American police procedurals have advanced to the point where detailed explanations of a policeman’s choices in handling a case are rarely given. The reader is allowed to follow on behind the cop a step or two, catching up when they can, working out clues to police decisions as well as the murderer’s as they race along behind the writer. The reader actually learns on the job. Sadly, Molay’s book ignores these useful methods for involving the reader, and we are told, in greater detail than perhaps necessary, every thought and instinct of our investigator and our killer. We don’t really need to know that much. We should be able to intuit these things by watching what the figures do.

Additionally, French men and women have a sexual way of interacting all the time, even in polite society and business situations, which might be refreshing but is certainly unique and perhaps even somewhat mystifying. American, Canadian, and British men are so much better trained in sexual politics by 2013. Women in these countries almost never hear a sexist putdown any more. It is considered the depths of gauche, and I believe most men find it now distasteful (and positively dangerous to their careers) to acknowledge agreement with such ideas. It would almost certainly doom the man to non-hetero coupling unless they wanted to pay for it. The author acknowledges the retrograde nature of these ideas, but that they are still heard in the law offices (even in fiction) is shocking.

However, there is here still that Paris magic that makes one want to read French crime novels that elucidate and explain in some small way the great ‘je ne sais quoi’ of Parisian living. Molay has published at least two other novels in this Nico Sirsky series, all of which appear to be available in French if not English, on Amazon. Tooth for a Tooth was published by Fayard in 2011, and Lunch in the Grass was published in 2012. The author did publish another mystery entitled Welcome to Murderland, published in 2008, but it does not appear to be part of the Nico Sirsky series.

I would love to see more French police dramas, in book form or on the screen, and find that the publisher for this translated novel, Le French Book, has a whole list of translated titles for the Francophiles among us. So click on the link above and find your new favorite. I received the galley of this title from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review.


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