Love and Death in Paris
Katrine Bouchet and Jack Lamont are awkward teenagers when they meet briefly in Paris in 1939. Three years later, when they next encounter each other, both have been ‘blooded’ by the Nazi occupation of France. Jack has killed once, and Katrine is halfway through her list of targets. The war has changed them but not their “love at first sight.”
Readers who thrive on the question of whether “love conquers all” should enjoy Love and Death in Paris and get satisfaction from its ending. For myself, however, I was disappointed that Charles Loebbaka’s credentials as journalist and media relations expert do not translate smoothly into fiction. His opening scenes read like shopping lists of data and headlines, connected by dialogue lifted from travel brochures. Midway, his writing gets less disjointed but there are still gaps in motivation and logic.
While the pacing is clipped, alternating between Katrine and Jack, I would have liked to read more of the transitions between the bouts of action. Characters need to be allowed to digest their experiences; readers to be given glimpses of their internal processing. Segues, after all, are valid devices in fiction as well as in music and interviews.
