Lost in Paris
In this first in a series set in the early 1920s, Zoe Barlow’s wealthy Alabama family casts her out, viewing her forbidden love affair as a disgrace. Zoe starts fresh in Paris as a painter, embraced by a community of artists, intellectuals, and activists of the Lost Generation. Among her close friends is Hadley Hemingway, who calls upon Zoe for help when she loses a valise filled with her husband Ernest’s first attempts at fiction. Zoe’s search for the lost luggage leads her to a village outside of Paris and the dead bodies of two Russian émigrés, one of whom might be Grand Duchess Anastasia of the Romanov dynasty. It also puts her in close contact with Detective Inspector Henri Chaillot, whose charms she can’t resist, even though he’s a married man. As the body count adds up, all the clues suggest the murderer is part of Zoe’s inner circle.
Lost in Paris brings postwar Paris to vivid life as Zoe frequents cafes, salons, clubs, and ateliers, brushing elbows with Lost Generation luminaries. Her snide ruminations on the quality of Hemingway’s early writing—which his wife really did lose—will tickle those who aren’t fans of the iconic writer. Overall, though, the plot is sluggish, and even the romance between Zoe and Henri never zings. The insertion of a subplot about Henri’s wife feels like an unnecessary distraction, serving mostly to pave the way for a second volume. There are some unfortunate anachronisms when it comes to language, like the use of “easy peasy” and “all that jazz” decades before their time.
