Twenty-seven years after burying the leftovers of a banquet in an art project, the place is excavated, but together with the leftovers a body is found. Who is the dead person and who killed him?

The hardest thing for me with this book was keeping track of all the people, there were a lot of names and I don't know if it was because they were French or just so many that made my brain go "who was he again?", but at least, in the end, I think I had gotten most of the names under control. The worst thing is reading a crime novel and when the culprit is revealed you just go " who was he again?" That did at least not happened with this book.

The story was quite straightforward, no big surprises, not a lot of red herrings. Someone was dead. Everyone was quite sure of whom it was more people dead and it was quite logical that the body buried 30 years earlier had something to do with present day's murder.

One thing that I found unusual with the book was that everyone was so nice; I mean among the cops, usually, the lead cop is a real  bastard or some other cop is a bastard. But everyone was genuinely nice. That was quite odd to read. This is the first crime novel I read that takes place in France so I don't know it is typical or if the author just wanted to portray everyone in that way. Anyway, that was a nice change to all the moody cops I usually read about.

Another thing that I thought about while reading the book was the cops quite relaxed attitude to the gay community. I mean two of the cops went to a gay bar to question witnesses and there were none of the usual attitudes towards homosexuality. I don't know if all the American/British/Swedish crime novels I have read have made me used to more eh harsh attitude towards homosexuals or something. But it was really nice to have cops just so at ease with it.

Anyway. I liked the book, the story wasn't that complex, but I liked the characters. I mean the main character Nico Sirsky, mentioned in the book Star Trek (a milieu looked  like a scene from Star Trek), and had a Queen ringtone (Another One Bites the Dust). He cares very much for his mother who had to be taken to the hospital after collapsing and worried about her while hunting a killer. I wish he was for real!

3.5 stars

Thank you Le French Book for providing me with a free copy for an honest review! ( )

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 garde 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 growing 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. ( )

This is turning out to be a fun crime series. I like seeing how murder investigations work in France. This book also deals well with homosexuality in the course of the murder investigation. I love that Nico's family is Ukrainian, and adds a pinch of Ukrainian culture to these stories. I could do without the sexy romance scenes between Nico and Caroline, but I'm sure there are many readers for whom these sections are welcome. I still wish there was a bit more background provided about how the French crime investigation procedurs work, but this book does a better job than book #2 (Crossing the Line) at explaining some of this for readers unfamiliar with the French system.

(I received this book from NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.) ( )

The third novel in the Paris Homicide Series, THE CITY OF BLOOD sees Chief of Police Nico Sirsky trying to solve a 30 year old murder, whilst his mother is desperately ill in hospital.

Readers of either of the earlier two novels will know that Sirsky is one of those wonderful grumpy, rumpled sorts of cops, who had a chequered love life, now resolved as his relationship with one of the specialist that solved his own health problems moves into something more permanent.

The investigation at the centre of THE CITY OF BLOOD's an odd one. Thirty years ago artist Samual Cassain held a banquet in a park. Influential people were invited to attend, and bring their own utensils. Once finished, the remains were to be buried, in a part of the park that originally used as slaughterhouses. The plan was always, after thirty years, to excavate the location, an archaeological investigation of a modern art installation. Nobody, however, expected to find a skeleton amongst those remains. Although very quickly, there's a sense of inevitability about the identity of the body, the reasons he died, and the location of his body is surprising to say the least.

In the middle of this bizarre scenario, and with a series of other deaths and an attack in the same area, Sirsky is juggling the investigation, and pressure from above for resolution, with the illness of his beloved mother. This keeps the pace and the tension up needless to say, with just the occasional wander into the developing relationship between Sirsky and his new love Caroline. Her inclusion in his family life, and in running interference between the medical system makes her somebody that Sirsky increasingly relies on. It's the personal aspects that don't quite jell as well as Sirsky the driven police officer makes sense. Sirsky the devoted son is slightly less convincing, a little odd; but Sirsky the devoted lover is almost off-putting. It might be that it's new love and it seems strange in a man of his age, and his work persona, but when this grumpy, tricky man suddenly gets all a bit gooey, it feels a little weird. Perhaps Molay is trying to make him seem like a more rounded man, a real human being rather than just a cop with an undivided attention span.

It's a minor quibble as so much more about this book works than doesn't. The plot is clever, and complicated, and the damage caused by the long wait for the first body to be found profound and quite moving in its portrayal. The escalation of the deaths, and the way that the case is investigated is believable and the manner in which the truth carefully and methodically revealed, seemed authentic. There are also some really interesting little tidbits of information about the French legal system - like the statute of limitations including murder. Having been lucky enough to read a couple of the books in this series now it's one that's well worth pursuing.

http://www.austcrimefiction.org/review/review-city-blood-fr%C3%A9d%C3%A9rique-mo... ( )

So take a wild guess which book I picked to start off my 2015 reading season with?! (oh the sweet anticipation of the selection process) I knew that the release date for book #3 in Frédérique Molay's Paris Homicide series is just around the corner so I was "saving" the book in order to (savor it and) be able to rave about it around the time of its publication so that other readers would be able to grab their copy of the book right away. (it is NOT a sweet torture waiting for the next book in a series you love)

My enthusiasm for the series, for Frédérique Molay's writing style and imagination, for the character of Nico Sirsky (swoon) has not diminished one bit and The City of Blood gave me enough fuel to feed my anticipation of book #4 now. This time around the story leads us into the world of Parisian art and artists. During the excavation of a modern art installation at La Villette park the workers dig up more than just art - discovery of human remains will have the Police Chief Nico Sirsky and his team trying to uncover many long buried secrets. As in the previous two books in the background there is a subplot regarding Nico's family/private life.

There are many things I enjoy about this series and the murder mystery aspect of it is just one element. I love learning new things about Paris, its history, its landscape. I think I might even end up creating a little "Paris Homicide book series tour guide to Paris" in order to make sure I cover all these places next time I go for a visit. At one point in the book Nico and one of his colleagues have to go to a gay bar/club in order to hunt down some information relevant to the investigation and I must say that was probably one of the most entertaining moments in the series. It felt so very French to me. Obviously I cannot recommend this series enough, especially for all the lovers of police procedurals.

Note: I received a free copy of this book in exchange for an honest review. I can honestly say that I am extremely grateful to Le French Book for supplying me with the books from this series because I am sure that my eagerness and impatience could've been detrimental to my health. Now I'm off to find out how long till book #4. ( )