The Clock Struck Murder (Lost in Paris, 2)
Zoe Barlow, an American artist enjoying the frenetic social life of Paris in 1924, finds lost Chagall paintings at a flea market. Searching for more, she finds the beautiful flea market vendor, Laurette, brutally murdered. Zoe sets out to find the killer, hoping for the help and support of her lover, Detective Inspector Henri Challiot.
Henri is married to stroke victim Gabrielle, who lies in bed virtually helpless with only a tiny green spider on her pillow to understand her. But Gabrielle is working to regain motion in order to wreak vengeance on her husband’s lover. Not knowing this, Zoe ignores Henri’s advice to stop investigating Laurette’s murder and, despite threats to her own safety, traces the girl’s romantic past with a pig farmer, Vicomte Gervais and an auto mechanic.
This novel, second in the Lost in Paris series, takes the reader on a vivid journey through the brilliantly stimulating artistic life of post-WW1 Paris, still recovering from the war but determined to become the cultural centre of the universe, as well as being the host of the 1924 Olympics. Besides Chagall, poets and sculptors, Zoe meets American medal-winner Johnny Weissmuller at the Moulin Rouge.
The plethora of characters—the cultural elite of the time together with the fictional characters involved in the investigation into Laurette’s killing—tends to become somewhat overwhelming. However, the accurate descriptions of the small places in Paris—the individual cafés, flea markets, steep stairs to the apartments—attract and hold the reader from page to page.
A mystery full of suspense and intrigue throughout, this is a welcome addition to Webb’s considerable body of humorous and insightful novels with strong and revealing settings.
