The Pere-Lachaise Mystery

The Pere-Lachaise Mystery is the second novel by Claude Izner featuring the bookseller turned detective Victor Legris and a splendid tale it is. The story opens with Victor's former mistress, Odette de Valois, recently widowed and visiting the familly mausoleum to pray for her late husband. Her maid is reluctant to enter the cemetary and waits outside for her but she does not return. Desparate, the maid turns to the only person in Paris that she knows, and that is her mistresses former lover. Victor pursues the solution to the mystery with his usual combination of determination and intelligent inquiry though suffering several brutal assaults on the way. Once again he is both assisted and obstructed by his fiery Russian girlfriend Tasha and his partner Kenji. Claude Izner has written a complex tale full of interesting and well drawn characters and conveying the atmosphere of late nineteenth century Paris as it established itself as the world capital of art, fashion and romance. As before the narrative proceeds at a steady pace drawing the reader through the twists and turns of the plot and part of the credit for this must go to the translators Lorenza Garcia and Isobel Reid. The publisher of Claude Izner's books, Gallic Books, is supported by the Cultural Department of the French Embassy in London and a very shrewd move on their part it is as no one who reads these excellent books can fail to see the French in a very favourable light.