The Perfume Thief
In Nazi-occupied Paris, Clementine has several strikes against her: she’s gender-fluid, and deeply involved with the artistic, non-heterosexual, nightclub, anti-Nazi community – a community that’s decreasing in numbers every Nazi-occupied day. She’s a retired con artist, now a creator of unique perfumes: a passion that leads her to embark upon one last con. Recruited by singer Zoë St. Angel, who’s involved with the Paris Resistance, Clementine is asked to find a famous perfumer’s recipe book – or, rather, to find or fake it for Oskar Voss, a Nazi bureaucrat who’s a Francophile and perfume addict, in a convoluted plot to frame and discredit Voss. And so Clementine adds yet another career to her resume: Resistance fighter.
Clementine now must tread a razor-thin line between safety and disaster as she weaves an imitation reality for Voss. While she’s experienced at creating new personas and history, this time the stakes are the highest possible: her life, and the lives of everyone she’s connected with. This time, failure is not an option.
This novel offers an entrancing look into a little-known WWII sub-society. The writing’s exquisite, each well-chosen word bringing to elegant life a Paris that no longer exists — and perhaps never existed save in the mind. Clementine and her gorgeous suits, her exotic past, her many and varied lovers, are metaphors for not only the queer society in which she moves, but for the many incarnations of the city of Paris herself. The descriptions of perfumes and their creation are so vivid I sometimes thought I actually discerned those scents on the air. Highly recommended!
