Huguette
Cara Black, author of the Aimée Leduc mystery series, has written a fast-paced, gritty thriller about a young woman’s fight to survive in the last days of World War II in France. Huguette finds herself orphaned and pregnant after being raped by a Nazi. Her father, who traded with the Germans on the black market, is murdered after the liberation of Paris. Accused of theft, Huguette goes on the run to avoid jail time, and is rescued by a young police officer, Claude Leduc. She finds a job running errands for a famous film director, who asks her to use her skills with numbers to falsify his accounts and hide his black-market dealings. But as she is drawn into the criminal underworld of black marketers, Huguette cannot escape her past and finds herself in danger from her father’s enemies. Then she meets Claude once again and finds he is investigating the murder of her father and several other victims, including her best friend. Will Claude save Huguette from her past, or will she become the next victim?
This is a wonderful novel about a natural survivor whose actions often fall outside the law, but who is so likeable that you cannot help but root for her. The world Huguette inhabits is a rough one, dealing with US Army deserters who have become black marketers, and men who will kill at the slightest provocation, and much of what she goes through during the war is hard to take, but makes for compelling reading. I also enjoyed the insights into the film industry in 1940s France. Readers of Black’s series will recognize Claude Leduc as the man who inspired his granddaughter Aimée to become a detective and will be interested in seeing him in his younger years. Highly recommended.
