Cara Black

The gripping story of a young woman's survival in the lawlessness of post-World War II France. August 1945: Seventeen-year-old Huguette Faure is a survivor. The war has taken everything from her--both her parents and her sense of safety. Now, pregnant and on the lam, she cannot return to her childhood home in Paris. Forced to reinvent herself, she must outrun her father's enemies, who want her dead. After narrowly avoiding jail time--thanks to the help of a kindhearted police officer named Claude Leduc--Huguette lands a job assisting a legendary film director. As her role develops from helping him with chores to cooking his books, she sees an opportunity to break free from the ghosts of her past once and for all. In this big-hearted story of resilience, New York Times bestselling author Cara Black offers a wholly original depiction of postwar France as well as introduces Claude Leduc--the man who decades later inspired his granddaughter, Aim e, to become a private investigator.

Parisian private investigator Aim e Leduc has been framed for the murder of her daughter's father--now she's on the lam, and must find the real killer to clear her name in this thrilling 21st installment of Cara Black's New York Times bestselling mystery series. Melac, Aim e Leduc's ex, has been hounding her for weeks, pressuring her to move little Chlo to Brittany, threatening to take her to court for custody--all but stalking her. Harassed and fed up, Aim e has stopped taking his calls. That's why she doesn't know as she's leaving a client's office late one night that Melac is waiting for her by the Bassin de la Villette--where an assailant attacks him just in time for Aimee to find his still-bleeding body in the canal. Interrupted, the killer knocks Aim e unconscious and plants the bloody knife in her hands for the police to find. Now Aim e is in police custody, debilitated by her concussion, with overwhelming evidence working against her. She has to figure out who murdered Melac--not an easy job, given the target on his back as a former homicide investigator. Cut off from her typical network and forced to operate under multiple layers of cover, Aim e must go deep into the underbelly of Paris's 19th arrondissement, where she rubs shoulders with biker gangs, paranoid journalists, grieving parents, and frustratingly tight-lipped ex-cops on her hunt for justice.

Cara Black's riveting 20th installment in her New York Times bestselling Parisian detective series entangles private investigator Aim e Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft and terrorist threats in Paris's 15th arrondissement. November, 2001: in the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of heightened fear, with constant bomb alerts and heightened ethnic tension. For Aim e Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father's death and her daughter's third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory--and Boris Viard, the partner of Aim e's friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosive under his fingernails. Aim e doesn't believe Boris set the bomb. In an effort to prove him not guilty, she battles the police and his own lab colleagues, collecting conflicting eyewitness reports. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aim e to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aim e uncovers ties to a cold case of her father's. As Aim e scours the streets of T h ran-sur-Seine trying to learn the truth, she has to ask herself if she should succumb to pressure from Chloe's biological father and move them out to his farm in Brittany.

In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light--abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why. The New York Times bestselling author of the Aim e Leduc investigations reimagines history in her masterful, pulse-pounding spy thriller, Three Hours in Paris. Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the F hrer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands. When Kate misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life--all the time wrestling with the suspicion that the whole operation was a set-up. Cara Black, doyenne of the Parisian crime novel, is at her best as she brings Occupation-era France to vivid life in this gripping story about one young woman with the temerity--and drive--to take on Hitler himself. *Features an illustrated map of 1940s Paris as full color endpapers.

In June of 1940, when Paris fell to the Nazis, Hitler spent a total of three hours in the City of Light--abruptly leaving, never to return. To this day, no one knows why. The New York Times bestselling author of the Aim e Leduc investigations reimagines history in her masterful, pulse-pounding spy thriller, Three Hours in Paris. Kate Rees, a young American markswoman, has been recruited by British intelligence to drop into Paris with a dangerous assignment: assassinate the F hrer. Wrecked by grief after a Luftwaffe bombing killed her husband and infant daughter, she is armed with a rifle, a vendetta, and a fierce resolve. But other than rushed and rudimentary instruction, she has no formal spy training. Thrust into the red-hot center of the war, a country girl from rural Oregon finds herself holding the fate of the world in her hands. When Kate misses her mark and the plan unravels, Kate is on the run for her life--all the time wrestling with the suspicion that the whole operation was a set-up. Cara Black, doyenne of the Parisian crime novel, is at her best as she brings Occupation-era France to vivid life in this gripping story about one young woman with the temerity--and drive--to take on Hitler himself.

A confession fifty years in the making puts everyone's favorite Paris d t ctive tr s chic, Aim e Leduc, on a collision course with the "Hand," a cabal of corrupt Parisian cops among who masterminded her father's murder--and among whose ranks he might have once found membership. When a friend's child is kidnapped while wearing her daughter's hoodie, Aim e realizes that the case has crossed into the realm of the personal in more ways than one. A dying man drags his oxygen machine into the office of ric Besson, a lawyer in Paris's 13th arrondissement. The old man, an accountant, is carrying a dilapidated notebook full of meticulous investment records. For decades, he has been helping a cadre of dirty cops launder stolen money. The notebook contains his full confession--he's waited 50 years to make it, and now it can't wait another day. He is adamant that Besson get the notebook into the hands of La Proc, Paris's chief prosecuting attorney, so the corruption can finally be brought to light. But en route to La Proc, Besson's courier--his assistant and nephew--is murdered, and the notebook disappears. Grief-stricken ric Besson tries to hire private investigator Aim e Leduc to find the notebook, but she is reluctant to get involved. Her father was a cop and was murdered by the same dirty syndicate the notebook implicates. She's not sure which she's more afraid of, the dangerous men who would kill for the notebook or the idea that her father's name might be among the dirty cops listed within it. Ultimately that's the reason she must take the case, which leads her across the Left Bank, from the Cambodian enclave of Khmer Rouge refugees to the ancient royal tapestry factories to the modern art galleries.

A Los Angeles Times National BestsellerA BBC Best Summer Read of 2017A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017 A Huffington Post Best Mystery of 2017 Paris, July 1999: Private investigator Aim e Leduc is walking through Saint-Germain when she is accosted by Suzanne Lesage, a Brigade Criminelle agent on an elite counterterrorism squad. Suzanne has just returned from the former Yugoslavia, where she was hunting down dangerous war criminals for the Hague. Back in Paris, Suzanne is convinced she's being stalked by a ghost--a Serbian warlord her team took down. She's suffering from PTSD and her boss thinks she's imagining things. She begs Aim e to investigate--is it possible Mirko Vladic could be alive and in Paris with a blood vendetta? Aim e is already working on a huge case; plus, she's got an eight-month-old baby to take care of. But she can't say no to Suzanne, whom she owes a big favor. Aim e chases the few leads she has, and all evidence confirms Mirko Vladic is dead. It seems that Suzanne is in fact paranoid, perhaps losing her mind--until Suzanne's team begins to die in a series of strange, tragic accidents. Are these just coincidences? Or are things not what they seem?

Meet Aim e Leduc, the smart, stylish Parisian private investigator, in her bestselling first investigation Aim e Leduc has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation--no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aim e with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aim e unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client's house in the Marais, Paris's historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, Ren , Aim e sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.

A dying woman has secret about the unsolved murder of Parisian P.I. Aim e Leduc's father, but is kidnapped before she can reveal it Paris, April 1999: Aim e Leduc has her work cut out for her--running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new b b . The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aim e, something to do with Aim e's father's unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no? The dying woman's secret is even more dangerous than her son realized. When Aim e arrives at the hospital, the boy's mother has disappeared. She was far too sick to leave on her own--she must have been abducted. What does she know that's so important it's worth killing for? And will Aim e be able to find her before it's too late and the medication keeping her alive runs out?

New York Times Bestseller Cara Black's fashionable Parisian P.I. Aim e Leduc has a new look for her 14th adventure: five months pregnant. June, 1998: Paris's sticky summer heat is even more oppressive than usual as rowdy French football fans riot in anticipation of the World Cup. Private investigator Aim e Leduc has been trying to slow down her hectic lifestyle--she's five months pregnant and has the baby's well-being to think about now. But then disaster strikes close to home. A serial rapist has been terrorizing Paris's Pigalle neighborhood, following teenage girls home and attacking them in their own houses. Zazie, the 13-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aim e's favorite caf , has disappeared. The police aren't mobilizing quickly enough, and when Zazie's desperate parents approach Aim e for help, she knows she couldn't say no even if she wanted to. From the Hardcover edition.

A long-lost Modigliani portrait, a grieving brother's blood vendetta, a Soviet secret that's been buried for 80 years--Parisian private investigator Aim e Leduc's current case is her most exciting one yet.The cobbled streets of Montparnasse might have been boho-chic in the 1920s, when artists, writers, and their muses drank absinthe and danced on cafe tables. But to Parisian private investigator Aim e Leduc, these streets hold darker secrets. When an old Russian man named Yuri hires Aim e to protect a priceless painting that just might be a Modigliani, she learns how deadly art theft can be. Yuri is found tortured to death in his atelier, and the painting is missing. Every time Aim e thinks she's found a new witness, the body count rises. What exactly is so special about this painting that so many people are willing to kill--and die--for it?

The twelfth Aim e Leduc investigation set in Paris Lost secrets of the Parisian Knights Templar, dangerous Chinatown sweatshops, dirty policemen, and botched affairs of the heart--the 12th Aim e Leduc mystery is the most exciting yet Aim e Leduc is happy her longtime business partner Ren has found a girlfriend. It's not her fault if she can't suppress her doubts about the relationship. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never returns to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Mus e, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway--with Meizi's photo in his wallet. Aim e does not like this scenario one bit, but she can't figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi's disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France's secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they're keeping tabs on Aim e. What has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself--and her friends--back out of it alive?

The eleventh Aim e Leduc investigation set in Paris Business is booming for Parisian private investigator Aim e Leduc. But she finds time to do a favor for her godfather, Commissaire Morbier, who asks her to drop by the gorgeous Passy home of his girlfriend, Xavierre d'Eslay, a haut bourgeois matron of Basque origin. Xavierre has been so busy with her daughter's upcoming wedding that she has stopped taking Morbier's calls, and he's worried something serious is going on. When Aim e crashes the rehearsal dinner, Xavierre is discovered strangled in her own yard, and circumstantial evidence makes Morbier the prime suspect. To vindicate her godfather, Aim e must find the real killer. Her investigation leads her to police corruption, radical Basque terrorists, and a kidnapped Spanish princess.

Someone impersonating Parisian P.I. Aim e Leduc shoots her partner, Ren , and eyewitnesses identify Aim e as the culprit. She must clear herself and find the shooter before she finishes the job Just as Parisian private investigator Aim e Leduc is about to leave for New York City to pursue a lead on a man who might be her brother, her fellow detective, Ren Friant, is wounded by a near-fatal gunshot. Aim e is distraught over Ren 's condition and horrified to be under suspicion for the attack; police have pegged her as the guilty party. At the same time, a large, mysterious sum appears in Leduc Detective's bank account, and tax authorities descend upon Aim e. It seems someone is impersonating her--someone who wants revenge. But for what?

Parisian P.I. Aim e Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, now a policewoman, who's charged with shooting her partner Aim e Leduc is having a bad day. First, she comes home from work at her Paris detective agency to learn that her boyfriend is leaving her. She goes out for a drink with her friend Laure, a police officer, but Laure's patrol partner, Jacques, interrupts, saying he needs to talk to Laure urgently. The two leave the bar, and when they don't return, Aim e follows Laure's path and finds her sprawled on a snowy rooftop, not far from Jacques, who is bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound. When the police arrive, they arrest Laure for murder. No one is interested in helping Aim e figure out the truth. As she chases down increasingly dangerous leads in the effort to free her friend, Aim e stumbles into a web of Corsican nationalists, separatists, gangsters, and artists. Could Jacques's murder and Laure's arrest be part of a much bigger cover-up?

A botched assignment leaves Parisian P.I. Aim e Leduc in possession of a cache of priceless Vietnamese jade. The jade's history is steeped in colonial bloodshed--and someone is willing to spill even more blood to get it back Private investigator Aim e Leduc has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple in Paris by her partner, Ren Friant. He urges her to learn to meditate: she could use a more healthful approach to life. The Vietnamese nun Linh has been helping Aim e to attain her goal, so when she asks Aim e for a favor--to go to the Clichy quartier to exchange an envelope for a package--Ren prompts Aim e to agree. But the intended recipient, Thad e Baret, is shot and dies in Aim e's arms before the transaction can be completed, leaving Aim e with a wounded arm, a check for 50,000 francs, and a trove of ancient jade artifacts. Whoever killed Baret wants the jade. The RG--the French secret service--a group of veterans of the war in Indochina and some wealthy ex-colonials and international corporations seeking oil rights are all implicated. And the nun, Linh, has disappeared.