Cara Black

Aimée Leduc is about to go onstage to give the keynote address at a tech conference that is sure to secure Leduc Detective some much-needed business contracts when she gets an emergency phone call from her daughter's playgroup: Aimée's own mother, who was supposed to pick up Chloé, never showed. Abandoning her hard-won speaking gig, Aimée rushes to get Chloé, annoyed that, yet again, her mother has let her down. But as Aimée and Chloé are leaving...

Cara Black has earned a devoted international following for her gripping mysteries set in France and starring the indomitable Aimee Leduc. Here, Aimee faces her greatest challenge when she assumes guardianship of an abandoned infant all the while being hunted by a killer in the sewers beneath the Seine.

When a Haitian woman arrives at the office of Leduc Detective and announces that she is Aimée's sister, her father's illegitimate daughter, Aimée is thrilled. A virtual orphan since her mother's desertion and her father's death, she has always wanted a sister. Her partner, René, however, is wary. Under French law even an illegitimate child would be entitled to a portion of her father's estate, including the detective agency and Aimée's apartment....

Her partner, Jacques, has set up a meeting in Montmartre with an informer. When Laure goes along as backup, Jacques is lured to a rooftop, where he is shot to death. Laure's gun has been fired, gunpowder residue is on her hands, and she is charged with her partner's murder. The police close ranks against the alleged cop killer. Aimee is determined to clear Laure's name. In doing so, she encounters separatist terrorists, Montmartre prostitutes, a surrealist...

Aimee Leduc is all dressed up in her new Chinese silk jacket, supposedly an "exclusive," for dinner with a difficult client at an elegant restaurant in the Bastille district. She is chagrined to see that the woman seated at the very next table is wearing an identical jacket. When the woman leaves her cell phone on the table, Aimee follows her to return it and is attacked in the shadowy Passage Boule Blanche. When she regains consciousness, Aimee finds...

When Zazie, the 14-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aimée Leduc's favorite cafe, disappears, the girl's desperate parents approach the private investigator for help and, during the course of her investigation, Aimée discovers a terrifying secret neighborhood history that will leave lives in the whole quartier upended.

Parisian computer expert Aimeé Leduc finds herself in the midst of murder and corruption after an anonymous telephone call leads her to an abandoned baby girl.

"Meeting across the River," from Bruce Springsteen's Born to Run album, is a song with an evocative melody and lyrics that unfold like a noir fable: a man down on his luck but desperate to make things right with his girl tells his buddy, Eddie, that they have to get across the river for a last-chance meeting with someone, all in the hopes of a big score, two grand. With that money, our hero can win back his girl and all will be right with the world--but...