Penzler Pick, January 2001: Howard Engel's Murder in Montparnasse, an intrigue-filled novel set in the Left Bank's glorious heyday in the 1920s, joins Stephen Glazier's The Lost Provinces and William Wiser's Disappearances as an outstanding example of this minigenre. Engel, an award-winning Canadian writer best known for his Benny Cooperman mystery series, makes his narrator a fellow countryman, Mike Ward. An expatriate supporting himself as a translator for a press agency on the Right Bank, Ward prefers to spend his time amid the colorful personalities who are permanent fixtures at the sidewalk cafes of the Left. One of his first acquaintances, J. Miller Waddington, is a sometime boxer and bullfight aficionado who's come to the City of Light intending to write the Great American Novel. Who does that remind you of?

Engel offers other characters both in and out of fictional disguise, and figuring out just who's who provides part of the entertainment value. The Fitzgeralds are on the scene, of course (as Wilson and Georgia O'Donnell), while another famous couple of the era, Gertrude Stein and Alice B. Toklas, walk through the action as themselves.

But there's another celebrated figure on hand who, in every way possible, is distinctly out of place. Jack the Ripper, or at least a killer who resembles that British fiend, is stalking Montparnasse, the bohemian quarter of the city, and his knife has already left behind five corpses. Not prostitutes, as in London, the victims have been artists' models, although one dead woman was an up-and-coming young painter. Fear is in the streets and starting to seep behind tightly closed shutters, and even in the brightly lit brasseries and bistros there is only a hollow feeling of safety.

While others of his acquaintance watch and wait with the fatalism of the poets and artists that they are, Mike Ward keeps his journalist's instincts about him. It occurs to him to wonder, after the latest slaying, if someone with a grudge against a former lover might not take lethal initiative advantage of the cover provided by the unknown Jack de Paris in order to commit murder and avoid suspicion. One of the best passages, for those keeping an eye out for the celebrities in these pages, is the section where Ward discusses his theories with an engaging character--only very lightly disguised--based on the legendary crime novelist Georges Simenon.

Howard Engel has obviously enjoyed the jigsaw aspects of arranging this quasi- historic mise en scène, and so will those readers whose taste runs both to pastiche and pastis. --Otto Penzler


Book Description
It's autumn 1925, and a killer uncannily like England's Jack the Ripper is stalking the city streets of Paris and preying on young women. Michael Ward is a journalist newly arrived to the Left Bank. When he falls in with Jason Waddington, an expatriate American writer who introduces him to the cafe scene and his crowd of writers and artists, Ward soon discovers that Jack de Paris is not the only trouble afoot in the City of Light. Rumor has it that Waddington has written a damaging roman a clef about his friends, and tempers are rising even as fear of the killer grips the city. When the body of Laure Duclos is found, it seems their circle has finally been touched by Jack. But Ward has his doubts and begins to wonder whether Laure was truly Jack de Paris's latest victim, or if someone else was using the serial killer as a convenient cover to protect themselves.

In a feat of literature reminiscent of Caleb Carr's The Alienist, Howard Engel blends intriguing historical fact with nail-biting fiction to produce a thriller of the highest order. Murder in Montparnasse will delight both new readers of Engel and his long-time fans.


About the Author
Howard Engel is a founding member of the Crime Writers' Association of Canada and winner of the Arthur Ellis Award for crime fiction. Murder in Montparnasse is his first departure from his popular Benny Cooperman series.

FROM THE PUBLISHER

It's Autumn 1925, and a killer uncannily like England's Jack the Ripper is stalking the streets of Paris and preying on young women. Michael Ward is a journalist newly arrived to the Left Bank. When he falls in with Jason Waddington, an expatriate American writer who introduces him to the cafe scene and his crowd of writers and artists, Ward soon discovers that Jack de Paris is not the only trouble afoot in the City of Light. Rumor has it that Waddington has written a damaging roman a clef about his friends and tempers are rising as fear of the killer grips the city. When the body of Laure Duclos is found, it seems their circle has finally been touched by Jack. But Ward has his doubts, and begins to wonder whether Laure was truly Jack de Paris's latest victim, or if someone else was using the serial killer as a convenient cover to protect themselves.

FROM THE CRITICS

Publishers Weekly

Taking a break from his Benny Cooperman mysteries, Engel (Getting Away with Murder) presents a Parisian mystery involving cafes, romance, murder and lots of wine. In the fall of 1925, Canadian journalist Mike Ward arrives in the City of Light in search of the literary life. Soon he meets Jason Waddington, an expat American writer, and is lured into his circle of fashionable authors, painters, editors and socialites. Among them is the breathtaking Laure Duclos, a "teacher of French"; despite warnings from his friends that "she's poison," Ward is hooked after one look. Their affair is short-lived, however, since Laure is soon murdered, apparently by the notorious Jack de Paris, a serial killer with a penchant for stabbing beautiful women. Ward suspects someone has used Jack as cover to do away with Laure, however, and determines to find the real murderer. Meanwhile, cafe gossip insinuates that Waddington's current manuscript is a character-defaming expos about his friends. Engel relies heavily on dialogue to push forward his plot, with plenty of intoxicated cafe talk thrown in, and his characters should please fans of the era: Waddington bears a pointed resemblance to Hemingway, and many other players are loosely based on notable writers or their famous fictional creations. Engel's descriptions of Paris in the '20s are charming, adding to the fun of the gambol he provides through the Left Bank and its denizens. Agent, Beverly Slopen. (Aug.) Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Library Journal

Engel, well known for his Benny Cooperman series, here tries his hand at historical fiction. Canadian Michael Ward, a recent arrival in 1925 Paris, works for a news service agency, translating from French to English. He pals around with an expatriate American couple and their friends, but the threat of a serial murderer, known as the "Jack of Paris," spreads a pall over their historic neighborhood. When one of their group is killed, Michael wonders whether there might be some connection to the expatriate's disturbing roman clef. Chilling prose, infused with ambient vitality, historic tidbits, and exotic Paris; highly recommended. Copyright 1999 Cahners Business Information.

Toby Bromberg - Romantic Times

Murder in Montparnasse brings the Paris of the lost generation stunningly to life. The sights and sounds of the Left Bank, the philosophies of the day and the attitudes of the people are all brilliantly recreated. This is a haunting reading experience that will leave the reader wanting more.

Kirkus Reviews

Paris, 1925. Three years after Hemingway look-alike Jason Waddington lost two years' worth of work when his wife Hadley—er, Priscilla—packed his manuscripts into a valise and left it on the platform of the Gare de Lyon, trouble is brewing again among the expatriate artists. A serial killer of artists' models dubbed "Paris Jack," after Jack the Ripper, has already claimed six victims when he strikes at French teacher Laure Duclos, a hanger-on of Wad's and sometime lover of several of his friends, including, most recently, infatuated Canadian journalist Michael Ward. But was it really Paris Jack who killed Laure, or was the murderer a copycat, perhaps a member of Wad's own circle? Setting aside the walk-ons who appear under their proper names—Joyce and Pound, Toklas and Stein, Sylvia Beach and Robert McAlmon—the suspect list seems to include both real-life friends of Hemingway (Jazz Age king Wilson O'Donnell and his madcap flapper wife Georgia) and characters from "the Spanish novel" his distressed friends are pressing him not to publish (Princeton boxer Hal Leopold, hard-bitten divorcée Lady Biz Leighton). The mystery keeps loping back to those missing manuscripts, but the real interest is in watching Engel avoid blemishing the memory of any well-remembered writers or characters when he fingers the killer. When you can't swing a dead body without hitting somebody famous, the air's bound to be thick with the lively, empty chatter of vivacious pretenders. The main break with Engel's Benny Cooperman series (Getting Away with Murder, 1998, etc.) is that this really is set in the period that series evokes.