In
his new thriller/murder mystery, Ghosts of Saint-Michel (St.
Martin’s Minotaur), Jake Lamar, an American writer living
in Paris, has used the sculptures on the city’s Saint-Michel
Fountain, which vividly depict a triumphant Saint Michael vanquishing
Satan’s forces, as both a symbol and a setting for events
past and present.
Lamar has
an easy way of weaving world politics – terrorism and a
CIA-like organization play leading roles in the plot, as do atrocities
committed in the past by the French police – into the personal
lives of believable characters. He is also totally at ease in
the bicultural world of American residents of Paris and their
French friends and lovers.
A quick plot
summary: the gutsy, charismatic Marva, the 62-year-old American
owner of a famed Paris soul-food restaurant, is in the grip of
overwhelming lust for her 28-year-old lover, her sous-chef Hassan
(described as having “the distracted, not-all-there look
of certain saints and sociopaths”). She is so anxious to
return to his arms that she even cuts short her usual month-long
August vacation (blasphemy in France, where the summer holiday
is sacred) with Loïc, her perfect husband.
But all is
not well when she returns to Paris. A bomb has exploded in the
headquarters of an international cultural organization, and her
lover and his cousin are the main suspects. The former has disappeared,
and the latter has been arrested.
This sets
off a chain of events in which we learn that none of the characters
are exactly what they seem to be – not even terrorists.
The lines between good and evil – so clear in the Saint-Michel
Fountain sculptures – begin to blur as we find out more
about the characters’ past lives.
The unlikely
savior of the increasingly complex and dangerous situation that
develops turns out to be Naima, Marva and Loïc’s 23-year-old
daughter, who returns from her home in New York City to play her
part in the unfolding drama and represent the coming together
of the often conflicting worlds of France and the United States.
Lamar’s
well-written and finely paced novel keeps our interest and sympathy
for the likable characters right up until the end, where the believability
level begins to slip. The novel’s denouement just goes too
far into the realm of implausibility. Few thrillers are plausible,
however, and this one is so much better-written and engaging than
most that it seems unimportant.
This is the
fifth novel by Lamar, a former journalist who published a memoir,
Bourgeois Blues, when he was barely 30. He has lived
in Montmartre for many years.
Heidi
Ellison
©
2006 Paris Update |
