THE PARIS FILES: A Novel, truly deeply involving alternative way of telling a familiar story

THE PARIS FILES: A Novel
EVA JURCZYK
Pamela Dorman Books/PRH (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$14.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Told entirely through police interviews, this stylish, sophisticated thriller captures the disastrous aftermath of Parisian rendezvous following the disappearance of a new lover

Genie St. Onge’s heart is broken more often than it’s not—but that doesn’t stop her from diving in head-first when she meets Jacob Ford. Their connection is instantaneous and consuming, and they agree to meet again in Paris. In a heady mix of sugared pastries and rumpled bedsheets, they begin plotting their future together. In the dreamy apartment they're renting in the 11th arrondissement, they become intoxicated by each other.

Until Jacob disappears.

Genie knows Jacob would never leave her. Not by choice. When phone calls to hospitals turn up nothing, she grows convinced that someone must have taken him. It's the only explanation.

Under the scrutiny of the French police, however, Genie’s story doesn’t quite hold up—and it sounds like Jacob might not be all he seems, either. Through police interviews with Genie and nearby residents of the 11th arrondissement, the truth remains elusive. She swears has no idea what happened to Jacob—so why doesn’t her story align with anyone else’s?

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My Review: I reviewed Author Eva's 6:40 To Montreal last year, that marvelously involving remake of Murder on the Orient Express the same 4.5* as here. The close model for the police-interview transcript format (of the answers only) used to tell the entire story...a kind of take on The Lady Vanishes... in this book is Robert Pinget's The Inquisitory, one of his noveau roman works from the 1960s. Permaybehaps Author Eva is using this stylistic, if not thematic, hopping around to participate in an unjustly underknown effort to sharpen appreciation of the novel...whatever truth there might be in that, I'm just grateful she chose not to emulate the absence of punctuation Pinget chose for his transcripts. That made for a long read.

So, Genie (!) and Jacob's mildly astounding story. A woman mets a man while she is on holiday; they feel It; they (bizarrely) being to plan a life together in Paris; and then they start the said life in Paris...without ever so much as texting each other in the months between making these plans, traveling other places, and then meet to begin their new life. Jacob promptly vanishes. Genie goes to the police.

Presented with that story as the beginning of the novel, the police begin to investigate and—to absolutely no one's surprise—can't verify Genie's story. Bits and parts of it match bits and parts of others' stories. It was, in fact, a touch odd to me that Genie annd Jacob's private lives felt as though they were pretty much a more open book than certainly *I* would be comfortable with. But a lot of that is Genie herself...she does not do demure or discreet. Her emotions run hot, her presentation of self is so deeply unnervingly *On* that I would find her a wearing person to keep company with. Jacob, now, is someone I'd look at Genie and then at him and think, "...???...maybe Jacob's just ghosted you, dear lady, so maybe lick your wounds and move on...?"

Police pursuing this line of discovery get a roaring earful. It is an uneasy thing to read about a woman being disbelieved by Authority in 2026. It is not unrealistic. And that is why it feels so...unsettling, so uncomfortable, to be with Genie as she negotiates the process of giving statement to Authority that Authority simply does not think reflect the facts when I don't entirely believe the statements myself. Compounded by the fact that it's painfully clear that every person giving Authority their statements is lying about something, and has a reason to dislike and mistrust Authority so to be dishonest.

At no time were my readerly feet firmly under me, at no point did I have any idea other than a developing one, at every turn of the page or change of chapters I had to brace myself for the next course alteration. It kept me fully engaged with this improbable story's improbable course, and ultimately its surprising if not fully convincing resolution.

It was a lot of fun, and while I was always sure there was going to come to light a huge international government-toppling plot or a dreadfully cruel revenge scheme a la the Monte Cristo gag for something Genie'd done to a grudge-holding tech billionaire, what actually happened was...condign.

No one who calumniates macarons shouuld get a HEA.

6:40 TO MONTREAL, solidly executed story with atmosphere to spare

6:40 TO MONTREAL
EVA JURCZYK
Poisoned Pen Press (non-affiliate Bookshop.org link)
$9.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: No WiFi, no distractions. No way out…

Agatha needs to get some serious work done on her new book. To help her, her husband bought her quiet time to concentrate: a train ticket for a six-hour ride from Toronto to Montreal. The time aboard sets the stage for a perfect writing retreat, with only a handful of other passengers, plenty of snacks and drinks, and beautiful views.

But Agatha has other plans for her day out… plans that are unexpectedly derailed when the train breaks down in the middle of the frigid Canadian woods, and one of Agatha's fellow passengers dies quietly in his seat. Soon, a pleasant morning in transit turns into a fight for survival against an unknown and unseen enemy. Will Agatha, or any of the passengers, make it out alive?

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA NETGALLEY. THANK YOU.

My Review: Nothing about the set-up, or even the execution, of this read is subtle. If you do not know already have prior reading congress with Murder on the Orient Express, I advise you to consider putting this read off for a time and read that classic first. Like The Murder of Roger Ackroyd (by the same author), there is only one first time to encounter this plot...I argue you should save yourself for the original because each of these two is a rare flawless read. Christie was not a flawless writer, but those two are her closest to flawlessly executed stories.

Okay, seasoned veterans of the mystery wars, it's just us chickens now. We've read it, maybe more than once, and already know what's up. Does Author Jurczyk have the chops to ring a good change on the Dame's platonic ideal? I'll offer a "yes" vote. I know it's entirely, utterly impossible in today's world for this plot to occur. No part of it would hold up to 2025 reality's technology or its many many many social conventions flouted herein.

Since The Twist℠ isn't much of one for me, I was left to find reasons I was flying through the pages. I like neurotic overwound Agatha, her raggedness from writer's block and looming deadline and simmering suspicion of her husband's motives in gifting her this luxe train trip; she's relatably nutso. As events unfold her responses remain in character for her established neuroticicity (is that a word? I need it so it is now) while drawing on her theoretical expertise in problem solving IRL for the first time.

I also resonated to the Canadian author's evocation of the cold's presence, like it's another character in the story, strongly and positively. I think y'all hothouse fleurs will feel similarly to me on the negative side. That "presence"—the beingness of the cold—is a good narrative technique deployed well, much as in the original. It gives the entire story an agreeably menacing claustrophobia, the kind of containment that, IRL, I'd find intolerable, but feel fine reading about when it's well done. It's well done here.

I'm in the camp that the middle of the story does not maintain the beginning's smart pace; it is down to the exigencies of fair-play storytelling, though, so since I couldn't see a trim or an elision I thought would benefit the pace without snipping off something I could see a need for, I'll tell those carpers to try doing it better before just complaining. The ending was fine, didn't make me roll my eyes like the tidy-bow ending I was expecting would've done. I wonder if fifteen more pages before The Twist℠ might've helped....

Monday-morning quarterbacking at its "finest" which should make Author Jurczyk bask in the glow that she has made the kind of story that her readers really invest in. I'll recommend it for all y'all.