Parisian Detective Tales, a Trilogy

Paris, 1947. In this post-WWII context, France has just started to recover from four years of Nazi occupation, and private detective Toni Bonnet struggles to make ends meet. Unlike the characters of hard-boiled American fiction that he admires, he is no risk taker and limits himself to simple cases of marital infidelity. Unexpectedly, his humdrum life takes a different turn when he discovers a series of murders committed by two women, a former Résistance hero and her younger sister, whose baby was fathered by a German officer during the war. Two Sisters, the first of a trilogy, is followed by The Child, and The Mother.

Two Sisters, the first part of a trilogy, takes place in Paris and the surrounding area shortly after the end of WWII, when France had barely started to recover from four years of Nazi occupation. It was a time of political turmoil and labor unrest but also of intense intellectual debates, and the ongoing war against the Viêt Minh in Indochina was a prelude to the decolonization process. Toni Bonnet, who was a Prisoner of War in Germany, returns to Paris, manages to find an apartment in the Marais area, and sets up his one-man detective agency. However, the post-WWII economic climate is unfavorable, and he struggles to make ends meet. He is no risk taker and specializes in cases of infidelity that do not require feats of daring, but his life takes a different turn when he is hired by a horsemeat butcher who thinks that his wife is being unfaithful. The butcher does not believe her when she says that she spends time with her older sister, who is supposedly gravely ill and in need of constant assistance. This assignment initially promises to be easy and lucrative, but Toni discovers that the butcher's wife had not lied about visiting her sister, except that the two women meet secretly in an abandoned house in the forest of Fontainebleau and that the allegedly sick woman, who happens to be a Résistance hero, is the picture of health. Although Toni does not have solid evidence, he becomes convinced that the sisters are linked to the deaths of former résistants. He also finds out that the butcher's wife had a baby by a German officer during the war and that her toddler has disappeared. The Child, the second part of the trilogy, focuses on the search for the missing toddler.

The author, who was born in France and lives in the United States, has had a long academic interest in pre- and post-WWII France, the chosen setting in Parisian Detective Tales. He has also published and lectured on French film and crime fiction, his other two areas of special interest.