WINEMAKER DETECTIVE MYSTERIES PAGE: #8 through #11

MONTMARTRE MYSTERIES (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #8)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Wine expert Benjamin Cooker travels to the French capital, where his is called to help care for some vineyards in Montmartre, a neighborhood full of memories for him. He stops in on an old friend. Arthur Solacroup left the Foreign Legion to open a wine shop good enough to be in the Cooker Guide.

But an attempted murder brings the past back into the present. But which past? The winemaker detective and his assistant Virgile want to know more, and their investigation leads them from the sands of Djibouti to the vineyards of Côte du Rhône.

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My Review: Virgile must've been a bad lad indeed in book seven, which I have not read. He comes in for much barbed raillery about his free-lovin' ways, not a thing I'd associate with an impending father-in-law relationship; but he is still here, and still obviously his mentor's pet despite the teasing.

Arthur, an old friend of Benjamin's and a former member of the Foreign Legion, is in need of the winelover's assistance hence the men's travel to Paris. Arthur has an attempted assassination in front, more or less, of them; the past in the Foreign Legion coming home to roost...?

We find out, of course; we also learn why Arthur decided to open a wine shop in Montmartre, and how Benjamin came to be his friend. The past is never that far from any mystery, especially in a series; this entry goes a lot further into Benjamin's past than usual. I enjoyed that, and enjoyed how Arthur came to be where he is (in a coma after the attack on him the men interrupted).

The excuse to get the men to Paris is as flimsy as anything I've ever read: A woman running some convent or hospital or something in Paris has a teensy remnant of a vineyard attached to it and asks Benjamin to come resuscitate it; he agrees, more than anything just to make the trip plausible enough. Virgile is the man of the hour, though. He's more the crimesolver than his boss is.

It's not the best book in the series but it worked fine: Arthur's shop is the occasion for much discussion of many delectable sounding bottles. The main lack is odd: the evocation of Paris feels...postcard level, facile and surface-oriented. I wished it had been more as is usual in this series of quite short reads. We're not going into history-book depths anywhere but more than this, if you please. Still quite readable and kept me engrossed enough to enjoy it.

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BACKSTABBING IN BEAUJOLAIS (Winemaker Detective Mysteries #9)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Anne Trager)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: The Winemaker Detective goes to Beaujolais, in a French-style cozy mystery for lovers of food and drink, amateur sleuth stories or anything set in France.

A business magnate calls on wine expert Benjamin Cooker to kickstart his new wine business in Beaujolais, sparking bitter rivalries. Can the Winemaker Detective and his assistant keep calculating real estate agents, taciturn winegrowers, dubious wine merchants and suspicious deaths from delaying delivery of the world-famous Beaujolais Nouveau? Another adventure in this made-for-TV mystery series set in France. Both a wine novel and a mystery.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Beaujolais Nouveau was all the rage ten-plus years ago, my memory informs me. I think the wine industry was having us on: “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.”

So there US wine snobs.

As a wealthy philistine wants to acquire a vineyard in Beaujolais to experiment with some new ideas in the making of the stuff, he runs into opposition from local people as well as his own haute Parisienne wife. The latter insists he consult with Benjamin, a renowned expert on wine, to determine how viable his plan to alter the way Beaujolais is drunk. But really, there's quite an amount of inertia in this process: “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.”

Change is hard anywhere. Changing the way the French make and consume wine? If you come for the king, you'd best not miss. That was our millionaire, Guillaume's, error. We're treated to the murder early in the story...but we're not told who's been murdered, so all the characters we meet during the story could be either the victims or the murderers.

It was a nice touch, and I'd've loved to see it on TV because I can't come up with a way to make the idea work. I'll assume it does but man, am I curious as to how. In this installment, Benjamin is the driver of the story because Guillaume has hired him for the legendary expertise he has in the entire world of wine. Of course Guillaume is looking for a certain outcome to the questions he's set Benjamin; he misjudged Benjamin, though, as Benjamin will pursue the truth. It would reflect poorly on his profesional honor to be seen doing Guillaume's bidding. You hire the best, you'd best be ready to believe their report.

Benjamin and Virgile banter and talk and generally behave as always, only now in Lyon and Beaujolais, as they discuss the case, the local wines, literature, how much they loved last night's meal; all the things that keep us coming back to the series.

By the time the murders were solved, I'd sort of accepted there wasn't a solution. There was; and it was dead clever for the authors to hide the victim this time instead of the perpetrator. A very fun entry into the series I'm still enjoying. (Though not really so much thrilled with the lists; they persist.)

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LATE HARVEST HAVOC (The Winemaker Detective Series Book 10)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: Disaster strikes the vineyards in Alsace. Vintners are tense and old grudges surface. The Winemaker Detective's reputation is on the line as he must find the cause before the late harvest starts.

Winter is in the air in Alsace and local customs are sowing trouble, piquing the curiosity of the famous winemaker from Bordeaux, Benjamin Cooker. While the wine expert and his assistant Virgile settle into their hotel in the old city of Colmar, distinguished vineyards are attacked. Is it revenge?

The plot thickens when estates with no apparent connection to one another suffer the same sabotage just days prior to the late harvest. All of Alsace is in turmoil, plunged in the grip of suspicion that traces its roots back to the darkest hours of the German occupation. As he crosses back and forth into Germany from the Alsace he thought he knew so well, Cooker discovers a land of superstition, rivalry, and jealousy. Between tastings of the celebrated wines, he is drawn into the lives and intrigues of the inhabitants.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Benjamin is getting older. As is so often the case, it's something outside himself that sours his usually fairly confident-in-goodness manner. It makes some sense, even, as it comes from nothing so petty as murdering someone you hate for one or another reason.

Someone is attacking the vines of Alsace. Someone is systematically and violently attacking the means of making wine in this ancient part-French, part-German province that Benjamin has known (he thought) most of his career. Some darker mutterings even accuse Benjamin, an outsider from the south, of being connected to the chainsaw attacks on the vines.

We'd get soured by that kind of gross insult to our specialist knowledge and passion, too. Virgile is the one who really shines, and that is always nice to see. He's still a skirt-chasin' houndawg, but he has skills he's honed under Benjamin's tutelage. He uses them to good advantage as he pokes into another viper's nest of Occupation resentments, as we saw in book #4. it felt a little bit weird for the men to wander from Lorraine into Germany and back seemingly at a whim, but it certainly drove home the point that the cultures on either side of the border are subtly different, they're not *dramatically* so; it makes sense to do that in the context of the story's resolution.

I was a bit confronted by the bolder-than-usual sex scene.

I'll say that Alsace, Strasbourg and its cathedral, and gewürztraminer all mean more to me than they ever have. I'm still eager to try, one day, mirabelle plums from nearby Lorraine; since they can't be exported, though, that is a very very unlikely eventuality.

I keep reading these stories, lists and all, because they are short enough to read in a sitting, dense of story enough to satisfy me as I read; and there are enough of them that I can get a solid foothold in their storyverse.

Don't start here, but don't stop before you get here, either.

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TAINTED TOKAY (The Winemaker Detective Series #11)
JEAN-PIERRE ALAUX & Noël Balen (tr. Sally Pane)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.5* of five

The Publisher Says: In between enjoying sumptuous food and wine, the Winemaker Detective grapples with deceit and deception in Old World Europe.

France’s top wine expert Benjamin Cooker sets off to enjoy the delights of Vienna, a romantic ride down the Danube, a gourmand’s visit to Budapest, and a luxury train through the enchanting Hungarian countryside. All too soon, stolen wallets, disappearing passports, guides who are a bit too obliging, and murder mar the trip. Meanwhile, in Bordeaux, Cooker’s assistant handsome Virgile faces an annoying rival and a mildew crisis in the vineyards just as Cooker’s lab technician is the victim of a mugging.

If you love cozy culinary mysteries, amateur detective stories, international mysteries with French flair, or anything wine-related, this made-for-TV series offers armchair travel at its best with gentle mysteries.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: Vienna? Hungary?!

What the actual. I was not expecting this, nor was I bargaining on Benjamin leaving Virgile in Bordeaux to make this lucullan journey. And does Virgile ever get the short end of the stick! All the practical problems are his to figure out and then to solve.

Benjamin, meantime, is spending time with his much-loved Elisabeth as they take in the scenery of the wine world along the Danube. It is genuinely the main pleasure I had in this story, their charming interactions. The authors make it clear these are soul mates, real genuine friends married and very devoted to each other. The tribulations of the murders around them merely make that clearer; they handle the different challenges with the sangfroid of long-established couples.

Back in Bordeaux, the disasters plaguing Benjamin's premises are affecting his every asset. Alexandrine, whose tenure with Benjamin exceeds Virgile's (I think; could be wrong about that), has hitherto kept her distance from Virgile which makes her more interesting, frankly.

Well, that's over.

Too bad, that, she went from mildly interesting in a greyscaled-Moneypenny way to just being another woman on Virgile's cosmic rapsheet. It was here that I determined the series and I were parting company. I'm just not able to gin up much interest in Virgile's exploits in bed, they outnumber the times he's taken the investigative lead, and...well...Vienna? I'm not very interested in the Danubian plains, and it's usually a sign we're going to spend more time outside the wine-world of France when we get time in foreign places back-to-back.

I had an excellent time with Benjamin, Elisabeth, Virgile, and the crew. I'd prefer to leave smiling so that's what I'm doing.

THE 7TH WOMAN, CROSSING THE LINE and THE CITY OF BLOOD, Paris-set procedurals from "France's Michael Connelly" deliver the goods

THE 7TH WOMAN
FRÉDÉRIQUE MOLAY (tr. Anne Trager) (Paris Homicide #1)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Winner of France's prestigious Prix du Quai des Orfèvres prize for best crime fiction, named Best Crime Fiction Novel of the Year, and already an international bestseller with over 150,000 copies sold. There's no rest for Paris's top criminal investigation division, La Crim'. Who is preying on women in the French capital? How can he kill again and again without leaving any clues? A serial killer is taking pleasure in a macabre ritual that leaves the police on tenterhooks. Chief of Police Nico Sirsky—a super cop with a modern-day real life, including an ex-wife, a teenage son and a budding love story—races against the clock to solve the murders as they get closer and closer to his inner circle. Will he resist the pressure? The story grabs you by the throat and doesn’t let go until the last page, leading you behind the scenes with the French police and into the coroner’s office. It has the suspense of Seven, with CSI-like details. You will never experience Paris the same way again!

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: What makes me feel like a putz is that I haven't read this since 2014. I needed to revisit it, clearly. In the meantime, I'll offer some comments about the clear memories the story has left me with, then come back if I have more to say.

I'll tell you what I *do* remember, the way Author Molay renders the crime scenes. It's very very grim, and don't think for a second you're ready for it! I remember the way they were slaughtered vividly. The sensitive are forewarned.

Nico Sirsky, our PoV cop, is a surprisingly vivid character. I was, given the women's-body-parts nature of the killings, expecting him to be less than fully realized in the 250-ish pages we're granted. I was wrong. His ex-wife, Sylvie, has just dumped their teen son Dimitri onto his doorstep at precisely the moment Nico is falling in love with the (annoyingly perfect, if I'm honest) Caroline. The cases are all demanding his attention...the evident serial killings are urgently necessary to solve, to stop, to explain somehow...and the threats aren't just to random women.

Thanks, Sylvie, for the well-timed breakdown. Not surprisingly, this adds a lot of stress to Nico's madly stressed life. I'm pretty sure a lot of the bad stuff in the dénouement is exacerbated by Sirsky's stunningly high stress levels.

The crimes are very close to home indeed, and Nico's entire world is badly damaged by the perpetrator and reason for the killing spree.

I enjoyed very much the details of the French legal system. Author Molay has made a career of creating the procedural tales beloved of American audiences and has gifted us with a lot of our own violent tropes, "perfected" and returned. The differences are plentiful...what's an investigative magistrate when it's at home?...and there are many little moments where it's clear the translator slipped in a tidbit of Paris geography for her US audience. But there are also the deep dives into Nico's thoughts and methods. There are less successful dives into the killer's methods. (Ugh.) All the way around, the story felt to me like a French person's idea of an American procedural, explained for a French audience and then translated for an American one. The details and grace notes that would entertain a French reader do the same job on me, at least.

This is, in fact, the thing I liked best about the read. It worked on a procedural level. It worked on a novelistic level. And it gave the reader the chance to get fully involved in less book-bulk than the typical bloated four-hundred-page overstuffed story-sandwich you can't fit in your mental mouth. And still made me care about Nico, Dimitri, Caroline, and even that wretch Sylvie. One important note, besides the violence perpetrated on women by the plot's demands, is that French gender relations of a decade-plus ago were not anywhere near the levels of pre-#MeToo US gender relations. It's simply not that way, and if that isn't okay with you, don't bother to try.

It's $5 on your Kindle. Risk it! I bet most of y'all won't be a bit sorry.

***NOTE THAT ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE COULD BE A SPOILER FOR THIS BOOK.***

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CROSSING THE LINE
FRÉDÉRIQUE MOLAY (tr. Anne Trager) (Paris Homicide #2)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: It's Christmas in Paris. Chief of Police Nico Sirsky returns to work after recovering from a gunshot wound. He's in love and raring to go. His first day back has him overseeing a jewel heist sting and taking on an odd investigation. Dental students discovered a message in the tooth of a severed head. Is it a sick joke? Sirsky and his team of crack homicide detectives follow the clues from an apparent suicide to an apparent accident to an all-out murder as an intricate machination starts breaking down. Just how far can despair push a man? How clear is the line between good and evil? More suspense and mystery with the Paris Homicide team from the prizewinning author Frédérique Molay, the "French Michael Connelly". This is the second in the prize-winning Paris Homicide series.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: "I was murdered" isn't something a cop expects to hear from a dismembered dead person. That's exactly what starts the machinery of a French homicide investigation moving in this exciting book. Second of Molay's "Paris Homicide" thrillers, we're more or less starting with Nico Sirsky, chief investigator from the last book, as he starts his normal day. I realize a lot of readers don't like the catch-you-up parts of procedurals, but I appreciate them...it's been most of a decade since I read The 7th Woman; no way in hell could I have recalled who these names were attached to without a refresher. I get it...I really do...lots of names, lots of titles, none of then familiar. Take your time, really best to start with The 7th Woman, but no matter what I recommend that you read slowly until they all fit into place.

They will! Paris, her police, the men and women who serve the unexpectedly dead as their interlocutors, all have a slot in Molay's stories. Something that Bruno Guedj, he of the "I was murdered" message hidden in his obviously, clumsily worked-on tooth, clearly expected to work as it always had. Donating his body to science...out of nowhere, blindsiding his wife and sons...was clearly calculated to get his message NOTICED and it worked.

The best thing about reading these books is the same thing people who enjoy Stuart Woods's Stone Barrington books, or James Patterson's Women's Murder Club books, are getting: Minimum of fussy stuff and maximum of forward momentum. Just what you want in a thriller. A bit less like those books is the way so much of the action, like press conferences and suchlike, take place off-screen. It's clear that Auteure Molay hasn't got her eye firmly set on a movie deal. One fillip in this book that I didn't care much for was the single-page chapters from the perpetrator's point of view...I didn't feel they served The Greater Good, somehow.

A great deal of the story has to do with how much Love rules our lives...Guedj, the victim, making sure his dearly and deeply loved family is cared for, and still making sure they won't be taken into dark places wondering why he died; then Nico, recovering from his nasty wounds inflicted by the killer in The 7th Woman, finally able to deal with his delight and love Caroline...his son Dimitri...all his team...Molay never forgets that the reason we read is that the characters mean something to us. I'd say that the series is a throwback to the days when 200-page thrillers were the norm. That makes the author's stakes high: must get action and character development from the off. The w-bomb dropped at 64% was an unpleasant surprise, out of keeping with the overall brisk and business-like tone. But to repeat the offense at 69%...! And then the coup de grâce at 88%, where it took me right out of a very high-stakes scene, well I ask you. Can that explain a whole star missing from the rating? You bet it can, sugarplum.

The details of Russian-descended Sirsky taking an interest in his heritage, the way this reconnects him to his teen son and his parents...all in this short word count, well, it's admirable. A note here to chuckle, albeit a bit wanly, about the pop-culture easter eggs in so many names..."Marc Walberg," "Dr. Queneau," et alii. Most amusant, Mme l'Auteure. I'm also a fan of the glimpses into the operational realities of the French justice system, the roles different people play in it, and how, like the US, so much happens due to needing to respond to the media's reporting on what has occurred.

Ending the story how, and where, she did made the underlying theme of Love, love, and luuuv as they intersect and intertwine so poignantly complete. I think the ultimate reveal is a good, solid ending. Had it not been for those blasted w-bombs there'd be four-plus stars on this outing in the "Paris Homicide" series. Molay has made a career in writing; she decided that her storytelling chops would sustain her, and I see that they truly have.

A special note of thanks to Translator Anne Trager. The careful, not-obtrusive explanations of things that wouldn't need explaining in the home audience's edition truly does help. I'd recommend that, at some point, a map of the parts of Paris we're going to be cruising through would be very helpful.

You need an exciting series, played for high stakes, and set in a lush landscape? Here it is, ready for you....

***NOTE THAT ANYTHING BELOW THIS LINE COULD BE A SPOILER FOR THIS BOOK.***

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THE CITY OF BLOOD
FRÉDÉRIQUE MOLAY (tr. Jeffrey Zuckerman) (Paris Homicide #3)
Le French Book(non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: When a major Parisian modern art event gets unexpected attention on live TV, Chief of Police Nico Sirsky and his team of elite crime fighters rush to La Villette park and museum complex. On the site of the French capital's former slaughterhouses, the blood is just starting to flow, and Sirsky finds himself chasing the butcher of Paris, while his own mother faces an uncertain future.

I RECEIVED A DRC FROM THE PUBLISHER VIA EDELWEISS+. THANK YOU.

My Review: You know what you're in for with the Molay procedurals: Action. You're going to get action from the start and Sirsky, in charge of his usual posse of law-enforcers, is about to enter a world that scares many more than it beguiles: Fine Art. Avant gard fine art. Of the twentieth century...art that makes anti-capitalist and anti-waste statements.

See why I wanted to review this now, at this juncture?

Much more stress for poor Nico comes from his mother, a woman...barely more than a girl!...of sixty-five. There is nothing easy about parents grpwing older, and Nico Sirsky the cop knows it well. He is on the receiving end of news he usually needs to break..."we have unfortunate news about your mother"...at the same time that he and his team solve a decades-old disappearance that brought life to a halt for another mother.

It seems that the supply of sexual violence in Paris was reasonably well-capped until the Cassian exhumation. Suddenly there's so much more happening, and in the cruisy Parc de La Villette, with unknown perp(s) making their awful desires manifest in reducing young gay men to bloodless meat.

What winds through this entire book, and through all three Molay stories that I have read, is a sense of the inviolability of two things: Love and Hate. Every crime is deeply seeded with both of these things, and every time Nico and his team work on a case, it is clear that each of them has been imbued with Nico's so-Slavic sense of the duality of the world as represented by this pairing. The future is not guaranteed, not to anyone, and those who seek a guarantee before committing themselves to Life are always, always left with regrets and unhappiness.

This according exactly with my own life's course, I've got no kick with it. And the ways in which Auteure Molay makes these bones dance is always a pleasure. One of the additional joys of this story is the simple, direct path that Nico unhesitatingly follows to solve a thirty-year-old crime, one that ended more than one life. And will now end others, as there is fallout from any act of Hate committed in this world. A large thread of Nico's life is his love of his family, and his resultant willingness to put himself in the shoes of anyone who needs his professional services. It is a pleasure to read about such a fine character...as one of the bereaved says to Nico, towards the end of the story, "Maigret can sleep well, you are a worthy successor to him."

We do spend some time in the peculiarly placed gay hookup world, a thing I wouldn't've expected La Molay to give so much space to. It's not played for comedy, it's not presented as Abnormal; it's a reality, it's where the crimes committed have led; therefore, thence goes (tall, blond, blue-eyed hunk) Nico. It fails to shock me that he ends up on a gay club's dance floor....

I was a bit more shocked that Nico sought out a Russian Orthodox priest to, I suppose confide in...? He's pretty resolutely a materialist. Still and all, it was worked into the story as well as such a thing could possibly be. The artists of the 1980s and the hothouse world of Fine Art is a significant character in the tales. It isn't *explored* per se, but its limits and its passions are very much part of the reason for the crimes that are experienced in this compact, intense read.

I encourage thriller readers to check out all three of these Paris Homicide series reads. Rev up the translation-reading you do painlessly, pleasurably, and with added thrills.

THE RARE EARTH EXCHANGE, second Fermatown/Larivière freelance-French-spy thriller

THE RARE EARTH EXCHANGE
BERNARD BESSON (tr. Sophie Weiner)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 ebook, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: A team of freelance spies gets caught up in a web of corruption and terrorism in a struggle to control rare minerals key to today's technology. Panic strikes at the highest levels of the French government when the former president is found hanging from the rafters in his home right after a terrorist attack at the airport. Is it suicide or assassination? Freelance operative John Spencer Larivière, his karate-trained partner Victoire, and their computer-genius sidekick Luc must find out what he was hiding. Quickly, the investigation turns into a globe-spanning confrontation in a world of high-frequency trading where manipulation and corruption reign. Larivière races against the clock to find out who is pulling the strings.

THE PUBLISHER GAVE ME A DRC VIA EDELWEISS+. SO THERE.

My Review: My opinion of this French John le Carré-does-Tom Clancy-esque thriller couldn’t be more tainted with smiles and coos of delight than if Luc himself was here, spread like the glorious buffet of bisexual manliness that he is, for my personal and very intimate delectation. I enjoyed it from giddy-up to whoa.

John Spencer Larivière and his Eurasian wife, Victoire, are parents of a fine young son. Their hawt, bisexual third in this not-sexual (but Luc would, with either one) throuple is Luc Racine. So you’ve got the full picture, their three-person business is assisting French intelligence agencies with those tasks that could, if discovered, become very, very troublesome with the greater French public…say, for example, lying, stealing, running honey traps for malefactors (that would be Luc), using modern high-tech wares in unscrupulous and legally iffy ways…all of which come into play here.

The events that bring this book from zero to sixty start with a supremely momentous, heavy loss-of-life event: A plane at the gate in Orly Airport explodes. The former president of France was supposed to be on that flight, so he is clearly presumed to be the target. There was a twist, however: His seat wasn’t holding him. He is alive and well, he is on the ground at Orly, and he is shown to be deeply distressed. As one would be. Though there’s the small matter of why he wasn’t on the plane, flight 912 from Kuala Lumpur to Orly, yet why he *was* in the airport.

And we’re off! There’s a non-stop ride from pillar to post and back again…there’s a political marriage, a political scandal or five that these three uncover but don’t blab about…why they get paid…travel to Parts Exotic, and a lovely sex interlude for lucky Luc with a blond hottie whose company has done something amazing, truly exciting, and quite surprising that’s caught international sub-rosa players’ attention. These are men who play rough, and true to form, they play very, very rough.

Things end well for those in the righter, lighter shades of grey. Things end poorly for the darker shades of grey. That’s why one reads these sorts of books, to be reassured that ma’at is maintained on the macro level even when the micro looks pretty wonky. If you’re looking for water-tight plotting, not likely to find it here. The reason the president’s upset is believable enough, but what happens as a result isn’t really something I’m prepared to suspend disbelief quite enough to stamp this with the full four stars.

I’d say that the translation’s pretty seamless, it sounds like these characters would sound to me (I did read The Greenland Breach so I knew what to expect), and I think throwing in Britishisms (“full stop” instead of “period” f/ex) left me with the vaguely distanced foreign feeling. A bit like, in films, British accents are used for villains of every nationality because they sound Furrin to Murrikins.

Would I read another of these thrillers with French accents? Mais oui! As soon as I find one, I will Kindle it right up. I’d recommend them to you, adventurous reader, as well.

THE GREENLAND BREACH, cli-fic thriller with some kickass characters

THE GREENLAND BREACH
BERNARD BESSON (tr. Julie Rose)
Le French Book (non-affiliate Amazon link)
$4.99 Kindle edition, available now

Rating: 3.75* of five

The Publisher Says: Experience the eco-thriller at a whole new level in this cli-fi spy novel. What is the real impact of global warming? This stylish thriller about climate change and its consequences couldn’t be more topical. Espionage, intrigue, and behind-the-scenes struggles for natural resources combine with French freelance spies and Bond-like action for a convincing, beautifully orchestrated tale, “like a sophisticated manga.”

The Arctic ice caps are breaking up. Europe and the East Coast of the United States brace for a tidal wave. Meanwhile, former French intelligence officer John Spencer Larivière, his karate-trained, steamy Eurasian partner, Victoire, and their bisexual computer-genius sidekick, Luc, pick up an ordinary freelance assignment that quickly leads them into the glacial silence of the great north, where a merciless war is being waged for control of discoveries that will change the future of humanity.

THE PUBLISHER SENT ME A DRC VIA EDELWEISS+ AT MY REQUEST. THANK YOU!

My Review: John Spencer Larivière heads Fermatown, his own special crack spy team he starts after his retirement from the French spy agency. His current, and first really profitable, job is to protect a silly girl-child from the consequences of her rash actions against her Canadian father's Arctic oil-and-gas business interests. This sounds a lot like the set-up for The Expanse book and television series, doesn't it? As framing devices go, it's not a bad one. John left the intelligence service after inheriting a house from an aunt...the kind of house that you see on those abandoned-castle sites. I want that house.

John is described as a gentle man, and his actions are oddly in accord with the description. I never had the feeling that he was some rampaging testosterone factory kept lightly controlled, waiting for an excuse to open a can of whoopass on someone. It was a refreshing change from most of thrillerdom's male leads. Even female leads, like a certain dragon-tattooed wench.

Victoire, John's partner as well as his wife, is the muscle being martial-arts trained. She's also a wisecracking disrespectful annoyance until about two-thirds of the way through the book. I found her to be a drag all the way through the book because she's not given anything all that challenging to her skill set to do. What she does do, she does splashily. I get it: Powerful woman doesn't need saving and in fact saves others. But can it please be more than enough for her to need to dig deep sooner than she's forced to do? I get the feeling she's really just doing her bit and then fixing her manicure while others are narrating the action.

Their computer-genius partner is Luc. Oh my. Luc is the sex machine that every spy novel needs. He uses his moneymaker(s) to great advantage throughout the book. It's refreshing in the extreme for his sexuality to be frankly omnivorous and for very little of consequence to be said about it. When bear is hungry, bear will eat. Bear eats a lot in this comparatively short book...and does it while maintaining an undercover persona. That's a handy trick (!) to have. Their spy outfit runs a semi-phony website for corporate research. Luc plays a researcher/reporter for the site and when someone needs to give up a datum but isn't being forthcoming enough for Luc, he flips the sex machine on and bam! Down they go, up comes the needed datum, and the story cracks on.

And the story does indeed crackle with energy, fed by many wires from multiple characters and organized into several competing circuits whose interconnection doesn't instantly leap forth. That's both a plus and a minus, as the pace can be so quick as to leave the reader wondering why this or that is happening, why the story needs all the characters it has...and I'd say it doesn't really need so many. It dilutes the effect of the main three series characters to have the many other voices speaking to us. There are some data points that can't reasonably be delivered any other way, I grant you, but it seemed to me to be a net hindrance to the reader's enjoyment of the story.

But the story itself is a bit of a problem. Greenland's de-icing is progressing at a terrifying rate in reality. This story's ecoterrorists' deliberate acceleration of that fact into a crisis-level event is very, very tense and provides a real edge of planet-wide stakes. Devastation from the tsunamis inherent in a truly large chunk of ice calving off the place actually makes me jittery to contemplate, living as I do on a sandbar stuck out into the North Atlantic...and on the beach no less. But the story, a complex chase after a MacGuffin, ends badly in that the MacGuffin's mere existence simply vanishes. I was deeply bothered by this. If people are willing to kill to possess the MacGuffin, make me understand that the story resolves its possession. I was left muddled.

The spycraft was interesting, the fiendishly knotted plot strands were each compelling, the pattern the whole made was still unresolved...but the verve, the energy, and the inclusion of a bisexual good guy elevate the read well above the expected and well-worn paths of American spy thrillers. It isn't perfect but it is very good, and it won't disappoint you if you're looking for a diversion that isn't substance free.