Gerald JayCritiques

I received this book for free in exchange for an honest review. This does not affect my opinion of the book or the content of my review.

Dangling from the steel beam, the dead body must have appeared as an eerie vision. Hanging upside down. The ankle swaying at the end of a rope.

Second in the Inspector Mazarelle Mystery series, The Hanged Man's Tale, has our Commandant Paul Mazarelle getting a promotion to join the Brigade Criminelle, which are the top 100 detectives in France. Along with his Lt. Jeannot and detail man Maurice, they are assigned to a murder case that had the body displayed hanging upside down in a tunnel and a hanged man tarot card in his jacket pocket. The victim turns out to be a former a police officer currently working as a PI. When everyone around Mazarelle wants the easy win with pinning the case on a Mafia Romani man, Mazarelle doesn't like how everything is adding up and soon begins to unravel a tangled web of far-right white supremacists, dirty cops, and newspapers paying for inside information to cases.

On the third floor the plaque on the wall announced La Brigade Criminelle with its thistle emblem and motto: “Qui s'y frotte s'y pique.” Meaning, as they say, “If you play with fire, you might get burned.”

I didn't read the first in the series but as this is more of a police procedural, focus more on the following and working the clues of the case, I didn't have a problem jumping in here. I did think the beginning felt jumbled with sentences trying to pack in numerous characters, setting the scene, and police organization names and structures. Around 30% the story evens out as the introductions are out of the way and we follow Mazarelle around. I felt like I did get to know Mazarelle, his wife dying of cancer, the numerous mentions of how big he is, and his general outlook on life, but, even as the lead, he's didn't become a character I necessarily grew to care about, the police procedural and solving the mystery are the stars of the story, so I can't say I'd be enticed to follow the character on another murder mystery.

Still, it was becoming clear---someone was messing with his investigation.
Definitely.
But who? And why?

When the story starts, it's from the pov of a character named Max, who has been radicalized and is setting up to assassinate the president of France, he fails when Mazarelle catches him and then dies when he tries to escape during transport after his arrest. The story then moves a few weeks into the future and the new murder case of the hanged man starts and you have to keep Max in the back of your mind until much later when his thread comes back into play. The threads I mentioned of far-right, dirty cops, and murder are credibly put together by Mazarelle and I liked how some of the connections were written out but I did think that the murderer/s was a bit sensational, mostly because the tone of story and Mazarelle's character was more grainy, low-key. The murderer/s story does give it a pop of lurid thriller but not sure it completely sat right in the overall tone of story. The guilty and innocent aren't obvious right away and side-characters come and go to muck about but Mazarelle shifts through it all, while surviving his own attempted murder. If you like police procedurals set in France, then the solving of a hanged man murder and all the tangled threads it brings together would be a good way to spend the afternoon.

A body was found dangling upside down inside the tunnels of a Paris canal – not suicidal buy murdered – with the Hanged Man tarot card tucked inside his pockets!
The police inspector Paul Mazarelle was assigned to investigate this homicide. As he dug deeper into the case, he was stonewalled everywhere he went. In addition to that, the body count kept increasing, including the ambitious and prominent journalist Claire Girard who was found dead with a tarot card in her hand – the Hanged Man!
Is the Hanged Man tarot card a curse?
The talented Gerald Jay has cleverly written this suspenseful and riveting thriller THE HANGED MAN’S TALE featuring Inspector Paul Mazarelle whom I found likeable and sharp-minded. The suspense of the novel intensified as I turned the pages while I was on the edge of my seat. This is my first book by Gerald Jay and I definitely will look forward to reading his future Inspector Mazarelle Mystery!
I would like to thank Bookishfirst for this tremendously exciting opportunity to read and review the ARC of THE HANGED MAN’S TALE, which I absolutely enjoyed!

Although I found myself more easily distracted while reading this second Mazarelle mystery than I was for the first (The Paris Directive), I still enjoyed it. Sometimes living in a country as big as the United States can give people a false sense of importance-- almost as if the rest of the world doesn't matter. Do you think the United States is the only country with right-wing extremists who hate immigrants? Think again. The Hanged Man's Tale, which takes place shortly after 9/11, makes it very clear that right-wing extremists and the plight of immigrants are problems around the world.

The two major "ingredients" of Mazarelle's team are Maurice Kalou, a Black man who is no stranger to bigotry and who has learned that doing everything by the book is the safest way to proceed, and young Jean Villepin, who's not only impulsive, but he also worships Mazarelle as only a young man who feels he's ten feet tall and bullet-proof can. Pit Mazarelle and these two against the crooked cops and right-wing extremists, and readers are treated to an often volatile mix.

Their investigation leads readers into the plight of the Roma (formerly known as gypsies) as well as into a camp for immigrants. Readers learn about ripoux (crooked cops) and les boeuf-carottes (what Americans refer to as Internal Affairs), and the fabled French Foreign Legion has a role in the proceedings, too.

As I said previously, I did find myself more easily distracted from the story in The Hanged Man's Tale, but the characters and the investigation are good, in particular the wily Mazarelle. I certainly wouldn't mind visiting him in Paris again. À bientôt, Paul!

(Review copy courtesy of the publisher and Net Galley)

Review of Uncorrected eBook Proof

The murder of a man left hanging inside the tunnels of a canal in Paris puts police inspector Paul Mazarelle on the trail of a killer. There’s only one clue: the tarot card of the hanged man stuffed into the breast pocket of the dead man’s jacket. It doesn’t take long for a suspect to emerge, but he is an innocent man railroaded into prison in an attempt to end the investigation.

While Commandant Mazarelle investigates, journalist Claire Girard investigates the same story. Both are seeking the Tarot Card Killer. And, in the process of his investigation, the inspector discovers a ruthless syndicate of white supremacists and an unexpected cabal of corrupt police officers.

As the killer claims more victims, secrets and conspiracies threaten Commandant Mazarelle’s life. Will he find the Tarot Card Killer or will he fall victim as well?

Set in Paris in 2002, the occasionally gruesome narrative is both compelling and intriguing. The strong sense of place and the nuanced characters give depth to the telling of the tale.

As the mystery slowly unravels, readers will find themselves drawn into the story despite the nasty undercurrent of racism that is a bit off-putting but that plays an integral part in the telling of the tale.

The sometimes-gritty story takes several surprising turns, keeping readers guessing and the pages turning until the fast-paced denouement plays out to a satisfying conclusion.

Recommended.

I received a free copy of this eBook from Doubleday Books and NetGalley
#TheHangedMansTale #NetGalley

I was hoping for something like Jean Jacques Manchette, but it wasn't. A decent, light weekend book.

Interesting, but intrinsically complex and difficult to discern meaning.½

This book was enjoyable on several levels: the writing was excellent, the staging and scenery were vivid, and the storytelling was engaging. In any "first in a series" novel, it's hard to strike a balance between the plot and characters, challenging to keep the reader's interest while building characters who will return in future books. Here, I was left wanting more about Mazarelle, and of course I'll hunt down the next book in the series. (Mission accomplished, Gerald Jay!)

My only gripe is that Mazarelle is too much like Louise Penny's Inspector Armand Gamache, even to the point of having an obnoxious junior sidekick. Penny's series has been one of my favorites for years, and reading this book was difficult as I struggled with the almost-Gamache character.½

Unlike many of the reviewers of this mystery on Library Thing, I was not impressed by this mystery. A hit man is hired to kill an American industrialist . He doesn't manage on the first try . Although H thinks very highly of himself, he botches the killing and ends up on his next try killing 4 people. The case goes to a former Paris police inspector, Paul Mazarelle who has moved to this small town Taziac because of his wife's illness. He picks the wrong man as the killer with terrible consequences. Then the daughter of one of the couples killed arrives in this small town and puts herself at risk by trying to find the killer,

Like most long-time mystery readers, I feel an eager anticipation when I start the first book in a new series, wondering if it will be an introduction to a protagonist who will become like an old friend, revisited each year. In the case of The Paris Directive, just the listing of the first few chapters provided a frisson of excitement:

1. Berlin
2. Élysée Palace, Paris
3. Hotel Adlon, Berlin
4. L'Ermitage, Taziac
5. Frankfurt
6. Dordogne River, Bergerac
7. Café Valon, Taziac

Ah, looks like international intrigue. Sure enough, we begin by meeting Klaus Reiner, hired killer, whose cold efficiency, bland good looks and fluency in German, French and English have put him at the peak of his deadly profession, with the ability to choose the most lucrative contracts.

Reiner's newest assignment takes him to the fictional village of Taziac, in France's Dordogne. The beautiful village in summer, with its cafés and restaurants, makes no impression on the all-business Reiner. He just wants to get the job done and move on, with the satisfaction of seeing an impressively large new deposit to his numbered account in Switzerland. But the hit goes wrong and Reiner has to take out four middle-aged tourists, instead of just the one assigned to him.

This is where our protagonist enters the scene. Paul Mazarelle, a former Paris police detective now living in Taziac, jumps on the case like a dog on a bone. Mazarelle had moved to Taziac, his young wife's home village, when she became ill, and he is now a widower who doesn't know whether to make Taziac his permanent home or return to Paris. Mazarelle is a comfortably large, middle-aged man with a luxuriant mustache, who enjoys his pipe, good wine and food, and women. But, most of all, Mazarelle likes to sink his teeth into a meaty murder case.

Mazarelle's investigation quickly identifies a likely suspect, but he has some doubts and digs deeper, mostly hampered, more than helped, by his men, especially Dutoit, whose job qualifications include stupidity, laziness, insolence, racism and habitual abuse of suspects and witnesses. When a couple of the murder victims' daughter arrives from the U.S. to kibitz the investigation and further inflame the interest of the already-annoying journalists who have descended on the town, Mazarelle's job becomes even more complicated.

An intriguing cat-and-mouse game begins between Mazarelle and Reiner, which leads to a tense and dramatic climax. Readers who enjoy inverted mysteries (those in which the culprit is known; not a whodunnit) should enjoy this story--though it has some flaws, mostly in characterization. The reader doesn't get a good feel for what Mazarelle is really like. At first, he seems like a shrewd, avuncular investigator. But later actions belie that image and we don't read anything to reconcile the differences into a fuller understanding of a more complex character. Similarly, Reiner turns from a coldly calculating and controlled, intelligent hitman into something quite different, but with no hint of the reasons for the alteration.

Gerald Jay is a pseudonym. Whoever he is, despite these stumbles in characterization, his writing is assured and powerful, leading me to believe he must have some kind of writing experience. Jay is said to be at work on a new Mazarelle book. I'm hopeful that as we get to know Mazarelle better, he will become an old friend.

DISCLOSURE: I received a free review copy of this book.

I could never get excited about this book. While Mazarelle is an interesting character in some ways, I found his background disjointed. The story did not hang together very well. There were too many plot lines and not all were cleared up by the end.

Revealed in the first 10 pages, it's no spoiler to learn that a sociopathic assassin (is there any other kind?) has been hired by shadowy French operatives to murder someone in Tazaic, France. The tantalizing mystery of the book surrounds questions of Who is behind the killing? To what alleged political end? Who is the target? How did everything go so wrong? Who is the mysterious functionary from the US Embassy? While the killer improvises, Inspector Mazarelle (a thoughtful widower recently relocated to the countryside from Paris) is called in to head the search for the murderer. Much evidence points to an Algerian immigrant as the culprit. A victim's daughter (predictably ravishing and conveniently a NYC assistant district attorney) meddlesomely inserts herself into the investigation. As we race along to the denouement, we are treated to examples of French rampant bureaucracy and overt bigotry, counterbalanced by ugly American tendencies, and brash insensitivity. The writing skirts the line, almost, but not quite falling into caricature, saved especially by the endearing and humane Inspecter. I found the action and plotting fast paced and largely engrossing. This was a fast read. A fine start in an Inspecter Mazarelle series. I'll be watching for the next installment.

I was pleasantly surprised with this book. I don't even remember what about the blub made me cautious but there was no need. I enjoyed it a lot. Inspector Mazarelle is an interesting character, he's still grieving for his wife who recently succumbed to cancer. He had moved back with her to her home town and joined the local police force. A brutal murder happens in this lazy little vacation town and it's hurting the local economy so everyone wants a quick resolution. Unfortunately, Mazarelle likes to do the job right.

The daughter of one of the murdered couple comes to claim her parents, she happens to be a criminal attorney and decides to stick her nose into the pot and doesn't like how it's turning out, so she starts poking around. Little do either of them know the murderer was a hired assassin and is unhappy that neither of them are accepting the patsy he worked so hard frame.

Overall, a pretty decent read much better than many of the mysteries out there, but still had plenty of it own holes if you really looked. The good news is they weren't so obvious that it wrecked the book. I enjoyed reading it and I think I'll keep an eye out for the next one.

A German contract killer has killed a Canadian industrialist in a quiet French village in the Dordogne area. The killer, usually efficient, had some problems and ended up killing four people. Inspector Paul Mazarelle, who has relocated to the area because his late wife wanted to die in her hometown, is assigned the case. The duo who bankrolled the murder are not pleased becausethe death was supposed to look like an accident. They don't want to pay the killer and he is not a person to cross. The killer has attempted to frame a Muslim from Algeria. Ali Sedak did steal some money from one of the murdered men and most village residents are ready to hang the crime on him. Sedak is arrested and then commits suicide in jail. I was not all that impressed with the skills of Mazarelle. Without the contract killer coming back to the Dordogne to clean things up to get his fee and then making mistakes it is doubtful that Mazarelle would have solved the case. There will be a sequel and I will be interested to see if Mazarelle is more skillful.½

The Paris Directive is the first of a series featuring French police inspector Paul Mazarelle. This initial volume has all the makings of a terrific thriller -- international espionage, embassy bombings, hit men, and a swirl of European cities. It gets a little thin in spots, but grows more solid by the end, hinting at better things to come. Gerald Jay was smart to start this one in the 1990s to give himself some wiggle room for what should be a very long series.½

I had a difficult time maintaining interest in The Paris Directive. The title implies that it is a treasure hunt genre but it is actually a detective story. I liked the beginning. It opened with a hired killer planning a hit. From there the story becomes a detective story taking place in France. I thought that the way French detectives operate would be an interesting cultural experience. However, it wasn't. When I requested this book from the Early Reviewer's Club the book's description talked about a hired killer and I thought that it would be a spy novel. I will post this as a Member's Giveaway so that those reader's who enjoy detective fiction can have a shot at writing a review.

This is the first book in a new series by author Gerald Jay featuring the intrepid French inspector, Paul Mazarelle. Mazarelle has recently left Paris for Taziac (France) and finds himself bored and down on his luck (what detective isn't?). Mazarelle soon finds himself in the middle of a quadruple homicide and the mystery begins. While the plot is fairly standard for a detective mystery, Jay shines in his character development and in the pacing of his writing. I was especially drawn to the antagonist Klaus Reiner, a truly evil villain. I also enjoyed reading how Mazarelle handpicks his detectives. Jay also incorporates a nice mixture of humor in his writing. I felt that the story got stronger as the book progressed so my recommendation is to give this book a chance and I think you will be pleasantly surprised! I know that I am looking forward to next Mazarelle mystery.

I was a little apprehensive starting out with this novel as I often find crime novels set in contemporary times just a little too gritty and dark. This had the hall marks of such a one: hired professional killer on a commission to eliminate a prominent businessman. And the murder is gruesome and the killer an unpleasant character. However the book was partially redeemed by an interesting setting and a likeable police investigator.

It's true that the novel strays perilously close to being a mite clichéd - however the author in my view just manages to avoid that pitfall. Our policeman is an experienced, mustachioed, city cop, with a liking for connoisseur pipe tobacco, who is now working in a backwater of Southern France where he moved because of the terminal illness of his young wife. So it's a town mouse meets country mouse setting; and the ambiance of Bergerac is charming. It all works best when focused on that small town atmosphere - however the novel does wander a great deal around to the USA, Paris, Spain, etc. There is also the obligatory American single woman seeking answers to who killed her parents; and avoiding perilous romantic attachment in the process. I liked the story best as a small town French mystery - there was, however, quite a lot of James Bond-esque international intrigue and somewhat bizarre plotting. The storyline was therefore sufficiently complex and tortuous to please those who like their stories with complications.

This is more of a police procedural and suspense novel than a mystery. We know from the beginning whodunnit, it's just what mistakes did they make in the doing that our investigator will be able to use to tease out the case. And will our investigators survive the perils we know they are in. It's almost Maigret... but, unfortunately, not quite. Certainly worth trying if you are a fan of police procedurals or don't-open-thedoor suspense stories, especially if you have a hankering for a soupçon of French atmosphere. I was a little disappointed... but I think I just expected a different genre of novel.

Lasting impression I took away from this story was that the author had made the telling of it more complicated (not to say preposterous) than necessary. That said, Mazarelle is an affable, nouveau-sleuth whose departure from the old stones of exurban Taziac and return to his former posting in Paris promises better things in future. "After all",says Mazarelle, "homicide is my life".

Disclosure: I received a complimentary copy of this book with the expectation I would provide an honest review.

I really wanted to like this story—I really did. In the end, it felt like it was just mediocre. The writing was uneven and even jarring (not in a good way) sometimes. The pace was fairly even and moved well. There were several plot holes that were fairly easy to look past, but they shouldn’t have been there in the first place.
It felt as though the author couldn’t decide which story he was going to write—a “thriller” (whatever that is these days), a mystery, a police procedural, or what. There is some political and corporate “intrigue” that was presented to explain the plot, and while somewhat interesting, ultimately they were made to be completely perfunctory and didn’t do anything to add to the feel of the story.
The characters were shallow and I found myself only interested in them because of the people they were: Cop, wife of the accused, embassy representative, assassin, shop-owner, etc. They were rather one-dimensional and lacked any unique personality.
The setting in the southwest of France is interesting, but never really adds flavor to the story—it would have been the same story even if set anywhere else.
All in all, it was an entertaining read, but not a great book. I honestly don’t know if I would go out of my way to look for anything else by Gerald Jay.

Possible spoilers below:

The professional assassin in this book was almost a joke. I cannot imagine someone who was more bumbling and inept than this man. Even worse, his ineptness was necessary to have a story. How can someone be a professional killer and leave so much to chance and then risk getting himself personally involved with his targets? It almost removed suspense because you knew he was such an idiot that he was going to get caught. I appreciate that he wasn’t a typical perfect, indestructible, omniscient bad guy that is so common, but his weaknesses were never described in enough detail to understand why he was so flawed.

The Paris Detective by Gerad Jay was an LT Early Reviewer book, and as I read some fairly wooden prose in the first few pages I thought, oh no, I made a mistake on this one. But then affable Inspector Mazarelle appeared on the scene, and the author and the reader both perked up.

Gerald Jay is the nom de plume of the first time author, and he's written an entertaining beginning to a projected series featuring Mazarelle. The inspector is a widower who has left a successful career in Paris to work in the rural village of Taziac, and finds himself joyfully distracted by his favorite pasttime, a challenging murder investigation. We know from the book's beginning that the murderer is a hired German professional assassin, so this isn't a whodunnit, but a canhecatchhim. All clues point elsewhere.

There are some authorial stumbles along the way. After we learn the inspector considers his strength to be intuition, not observation, and that he has little fashion sense, he meets a woman who "was wearing a cerulan Chanel - straight shoulders and indigo buttons down the front - her long black hair pulled back into a tight chignon." Really? And the main characters develop in rough jump cut ways at times - the inspector is more complex than we're initially led to believe (which is good, overall) and the killer less cold and less adept (not so good, in my view). The killer acts in some ways that don't seem to fit his character.

But these are basically quibbles in a suspend-your-disbelief genre. I expect this author, who is obviously capable, will smooth out some of the rough spots in subsequent books. This one is continually entertaining, with a fun battle of wits for the reader having inside knowledge. It features well done suspense, and characters we do care about, especially Molly, the daughter of one of the victims, an assistant prosecutor from New York who insists on being involved in the investigation. Her conviction that they're being misled brings her into the killer's target sights, and drives the book to its nail-biting conclusion. I hope she shows up in subsequent books.½

First Line: Reiner checked his watch has he waited by the elevator.

It's 1999. contract killer Klaus Reiner has just been hired by two former French intelligence agents to eliminate an American businessman vacationing in southwestern France. Reiner specializes in murders that the police file away as accidents. He has no problem locating his target in a house outside the small village of Taziac, but things go pear-shaped when three innocent people are in the wrong place at the wrong time.

These murders are assigned to Inspector Paul Mazarelle, formerly of Paris but now living in Taziac. His superiors fully expect him to bring his experience and successful record to bear on this quadruple homicide that's occurred at the height of tourist season.

Enter Molly Reece, a New York City district attorney and the daughter of two of the victims. All the evidence points to a local Arab handyman, but after talking to him, Reece has doubts that he's the killer. So does Mazarelle, but Molly's knack of showing up in high profile locations and running her own investigation not only makes Mazarelle's job more difficult, it makes Reiner nervous enough to return to Taziac to ensure the police interpret the evidence the way he wants them to.

Author Gerald Jay has taken the threads of the police procedural, the spy novel, and French charm and woven them into a vastly entertaining read. Mazarelle is a big bear of a man who smokes a special blend (Philosophe) of tobacco in his pipe, enjoys a midday cognac, and eats his favorite meals at the Café Valon. Although he believes he's not in the ranks of literary sleuths the like of Maigret or Poirot because his powers of intuition are much greater than his powers of observation, he is known as "the Swiss Army knife of detectives." One of the things he insists upon when given command of the investigation is the power of handpicking his detectives, and it's fascinating to see how he chooses them. During the selection, I felt as though there was one detective in particular that was a weak link, and it was interesting to see if my deduction was correct.

Molly Reece adds a strong yet naïve element to the cast of characters, although her intelligence and intuition seems to fade in and out as the story progresses. Klaus Reiner is one of the more interesting villains I've become acquainted with recently, a chillingly attractive blend of ego, intelligence, and psychopathy.

There are some excellent mystery series set in France-- especially those written by Cara Black, Fred Vargas, and Martin Walker. How does Gerald Jay's The Paris Directive compare? Very well indeed. I was quite happy to see that he's working on his second Inspector Mazarelle mystery. These talented writers are making France a regular stop in my crime fiction reading.

If I hadn’t agreed to review “The Paris Directive” I probably would have quit reading in the first fifty pages. Much of the early part of the book seems to be involved with character development giving insufficient attention to building enough suspense to keep it moving at a lively pace. Despite early brutality, the story starts slowly and so many characters are introduced that it was hard for me to keep them straight. But I stuck with it and found that it turned out to be worth the effort.
As the bad guy, a German named Reiner, bumps off people here and there it's clear that he is a very bad guy, but for me sheer savagery doesn’t build suspense. His contract with two Frenchmen to kill an American tourist appears to have a political connection with a 1999 NATO bombing of the Chinese embassy in Belgrade. Reiner’s first attempt to murder his victim by engineering a car crash is so ill conceived that one has to wonder if his malevolence is matched by his ineptitude. He eventually succeeds, but in a bloodbath that kills more people than were intended and vexes his employers, who wanted the victim’s death to look accidental.
The author injects plenty of French words into the dialogue, for what purpose it is difficult to see because otherwise the French speakers sound like Americans, even to the idioms. Well into the book the pace quickens with the introduction of a couple of interesting characters: Molly, daughter of two of the victims, and Mazarelle, a French detective who is despondent over the recent death of his wife. Molly is determined to investigate her parents’ murders, believes the man the police arrested is innocent, gets in the way of Mazarelle, and becomes dangerously close to Reiner, who has assumed a disguise.
Mazarelle, Molly, and Reiner dance toward a climax that wraps up the loose ends, but seems contrived and trite like the timely arrival of the cavalry. Molly, an assistant DA from New York displays a lack of good sense, and Reiner doesn’t seem much smarter. Mazarelle is a good enough detective who has his flaws, but isn’t nearly as memorable as a Hercule Poirot. The author suggests that this is the first in a series. Well enough, but we know the detective speaks French without the interminable reminders.

Unfortunately, Mr. Jay simply tried too hard in this debut of Monsieur Mazarelle. It appears he set out to craft a Favorite Detective instead of setting out to write a good crime novel and letting the protagonist become what he would.

As you plow through the first half of the book, there's little sense of a character emerging organically from the story. Instead, you can almost hear the checklist being consulted and appropriate paragraphs being fashioned: he must be amiable, so introduce him good-naturedly helping customers when mistaken for the proprietor of a bakery; he must be competent, so have him be a hotshot Paris detective who only moved to the countryside to care for a dying wife; he must have pain, so make that wife rather unfaithful; he must be tough, so give him bullet scars; he must be slightly quirky, so give him mannerisms and an odd, unexplained tattoo; and so on.

The rest of the book received less attention. There's a rather mushy plot involving a pair of ex-secret agents who want a certain business man murdered for reasons not quite clear to the reader until the end (and even then you may be skeptical). There's an assassin who is either an extremely competent Jackal-type character or a somewhat incompetent psychotic, the story is not quite sure which. There are a variety of other characters who are colorful on the surface but don't have any real depth. A couple of red herrings are thrown in that are so cursory that the reader pays them no attention.

In short, this just didn't work for me very well. You don't get a Maigret or a Gamache the same way that you recreate some dish you saw on Food Network; it's not a recipe. And, while you're waiting for your character to emerge, it helps to have a solid story in which to place them. It's not an unreadable book but I don't see myself picking up the next one.

I was very disappointed by this book. Foreign based mysteries are among my favorite reads and I was thus excited to receive a copy of this to review. By the end, I was struggling with whether the book deserved any of my attention. The writing is mediocre. The narration shifts too often and is sloppily done. The characters are not well drawn and they wind up generating little emotional response.

However, the biggest problems for me were the moral failings of the detective that were treated with disturbing flippancy. First, a suspect that the detective, who theoretically prizes his gut instinct, thinks probably did not commit the crime is locked up without being charged for several days. During this time the suspect is subjected to light 24 hours a day and is kept in handcuffs the entire time. This is tantamount to torture. Yet, there is never even a whiff of discussion that this might be wrong. In the end this character dies in prison and yet the detective feels no remorse for putting him in that situation. He has no qualms about the fact he has dispensed the death penalty upon this man.

Secondly, and more damningly, the detective's second in command attempts to rape a woman. The response to this is anger that the investigation may have been compromised. This is despicable. The police officer should be arrested and brought up on charges but this is never even contemplated. These failings of the detective make me question the standing of the author. How can he think that he has created a character that we want to invest in when this character reacts to rape in this way? This is a police officer, the very people intended to protect us. Rape victims is being systematically marginalized by certain parts of our society. It should never be discussed flippantly or without deep compassion. In this case rape has been decriminalized and turned into merely a potential procedural sticking point. I wish to tell Gerald Jay that this is unacceptable.

The plot itself was far fetched even by Ludlumesque standards. There are many great French detectives but they are let down here. Maigret and Adamsberg would find Jay's detective ill-imagined and immoral. I would not recommend this to anyone and am disappointed to hear another volume is already in the works.

I looked forward to trying on a new detective, learning his faults, foibles and eccentricities. Unfortunately I found a rather bland character involved in a plot that missed being outlandish by a small amount. Stereotypical characters involved in that the author attempts to make complex by awkward shifts. However, it was a good beach read and perhaps Gerald Jay's next one will mature and we will have another detective to follow. I hope so.