About this item
The world knows Aime Leduc, heroine of 15 mysteries in this New York Times bestselling series, as a trs chic, no-nonsense private investigator - the toughest and most relentless in Paris. Now, author Cara Black dips back in time to reveal how Aime first became a detective . . .November 1989: Aime Leduc is in her first year of college at Paris's preeminent medical school. She lives in a 17th-century apartment that overlooks the Seine with her father, who runs the family detective agency.But the week the Berlin Wall crumbles, so does Aime's life as she knows it. First, someone has sabotaged her lab work, putting her at risk of failing out of the program. Then, she finds out her aristo boyfriend is getting engaged to another woman. And finally, Aime's father takes off to Berlin on a mysterious errand. He asks Aime to help out at the detective agency while he's gone - as if she doesn't already have enough to do. But the case Aime finds herself investigating - a murder linked to a transport truck of Nazi gold that disappeared in the French countryside during the height of World War II - has gotten under her skin. Her heart may not lie in medicine after all - maybe it's time to think harder about the family business.
About the Author
Cara Black lives in San Francisco with her bookseller husband, Jun, and their dog. She's a NYTImes and USATODAY bestselling author, a San Francisco Library Laureate, Macavity and three time Anthony award-nominee for her series, Aimée Leduc Investigations, set in Paris Cara Black is the national bestselling author of 19 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, which is set in Paris. Cara has received numerous accolades for her novels, including multiple nominations for the prestigious Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris--the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture--and invitations to be the Guest of Honor at such noteworthy conferences as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime. With more than 400,000 books in print, the Aimée Leduc series has been translated into German, Norwegian, Japanese, French, Spanish, and Hebrew. Her first ever standalone, THREE HOURS IN PARIS, comes out in April 2020.Cara was born in Chicago but has lived in California's Bay Area since she was five years old. Before turning to writing fulltime, she tried her hand at a number of jobs: she was a barista in the Basel train station café in Switzerland, taught English in Japan, studied Buddhism in Dharamsala in Northern India, and worked as a bar girl in Bangkok (only pouring drinks!) . After studying Chinese history at Sophia University in Tokyo--where she met her husband, Jun, a bookseller, potter, and amateur chef--she obtained her teaching credential at San Francisco State College, and went on to work as a preschool director and then as an agent of the federally funded Head Start program, which sent her into San Francisco's Chinatown to help families there--often sweatshop workers--secure early care and early education for their children. Each of these jobs was amazing and educational in a different way, and the Aimée Leduc books are covered in fingerprints of Cara's various experiences.Her love of all things French was kindled by the French-speaking nuns at her Catholic high school, where Cara first encountered French literature and went crazy for the work of Prix Goncourt winner Romain Gary. Her junior year in high school, she wrote him a fan letter--which he answered, and which inspired her to make her first trip to Paris, where her idol took her out for coffee and a cigar. Since then, she has been to Paris many, many times. On each visit she entrenches herself in a different part of the city, learning its secret history. She has posed as a journalist to sneak into closed areas, trained at a firing range with real Paris flics, gotten locked in a bathroom at the Victor Hugo museum, and--just like Aimée--gone down into the sewers with the rats (she can never pass up an opportunity to see something new, even when the timing isn't ideal--she was headed to a fancy dinner right afterwards and had a
