Something Dark is Happening in the City of Light
It's Paris, in September 1929. Prohibition is still going on in the US, and there is a huge expatriate community of Americans in the City of Light. Many of the artists have moved on, but not Picasso. Not Man Ray.
Private Detective Harris Stuyvesant wakes up with a hangover ... and a prostitute next to him in bed. He's trying to track down a missing American heiress ... one who has also been next to him in bed. And he's doing it through the Montparnasse art community.
Peopled with the famous and infamous, Laurie R. King's "The Bones of Paris" puts is in the midst of the modern art movement along with the mystery. Man Ray's model/lovers Kiki and Lee Miller give one another side-long, jealous glances at the Rotonde, and Josephine Baker is singing at nightclubs. Ernest Hemingway will offer up a round of boxing, and Sylvia Beach is just starting Shakespeare & Company.
It is in this glittering city that women are disappearing ... and bits of their photographs are appearing in Displays created by Didi Moreau -- who also likes to use bones in his work. And who took the hotographs? Well, several of them come from the studios of Man Ray.
King has crafted a beautiful book filled with real people -- including the fictional ones. Everyone has their foibles and secrets. While I began to suspect the "whodunnit" a couple of chapters before the reveal, I was still well-entertained and would recommend this book to fans of historical fiction, Francophiles, and mystery buffs alike.
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