Who doesn’t love a witty yet cynical investigator? I’ve read a lot of WWII fiction, but this was my first detective series from that time. It’s the beginning of a new series, and we are in 1940s Paris with Inspector Henri Lefort. He is set up for failure and only has 5 days to solve a murder in the Louvre, but isn’t allowed to see the scene or murder weapon. A lot of plot lines take place but this book kept me guessing! I also loved his assistant, Nicola, and her knowledge about the art world.

I also love the inclusion of real life people, it adds to the authenticity.

This book was really hard to get into I made it approximately 20% twice and I couldn’t go any further. Just not my cup of tea.

This is a historical mystery with a modern feel, dual timelines and people and things that are not exactly what they seem. Set during WWII, with the second timeline throwing back to WWI, the suspense is ratcheted up by the timeline imposed by the Nazis in Nazi-occupied France. Add to that the fact that the Germans don't actually want the murder solved. Lots going on here and the answer to "do we really need another mystery set in WWII? Is yes, if it is as good as this one.

Loved it! This book was very well written, the characters are fun, the setting is great - there’s nothing that I didn’t like in this book. The main character keeps things interesting, the main female is smart, not just pretty, and the additional characters add depth to the story. I really liked it and I’m glad to see there’s another one coming out. Can’t wait to read it! This is the start of a great series!

I loved the setting and time period for this novel, but I didn’t really care for the main character. A solid 3 stars for this story.

French Police Detective Henri Lefort of the Robbery Division, was instrumental in nabbing a robbery suspect in the home of Mimi Bonaparte, a distant relative of Napoleon. Having caught the eye of higher ups, he's now been recruited by the Nazis to solve the high level murder of a German major without access to the scene of the crime - only given a list of five suspects and a warning - solve the case in five days or else! His career and life are on the line.

Die Around Sundown is a multifaceted story starring an eccentric character with several unique quirks. Detective Henri LeFort is a sharp, street savvy robbery detective. Unfortunately, everyday loud sounds set him on edge seemingly stemming from his service during WWI? Mimi Bonaparte, who trained under Sigmund Freud, is determined to solve this mystery by convincing Henri to undergo psychoanalysis during sessions with her. Their sessions are the manner Henri's backstory is introduced to readers. Lefort is an unique character - witty and clever with a strange connection to his assistant, Nicola, and it's her knowledge of art that helps him crack the case so he can live another day.

There're a couple of mysteries going on at once in Die Around Sundown and as the story plays out, readers are charged with solving them. Pryor does an excellent job with characterization, especially Henry with his many quirks and complex nature. While I found the pacing a bit of a mixed bag, a bit up and down, the intensity builds as clues and foreshadowing fall into place. Fans of historical fiction, especially centering around WWII, will enjoy this one as will amateur sleuths who enjoy whodunit crime novels.

I loved this start to a new series by Mark Pryor. I am a huge fan of his and thought this book was so well done. I highly recommend it.

Detective Henri Lefort lives in newly occupied Paris. He is given an impossible task by a German official. He will also be revealing a secret from his past. The book has a vintage feel, a true detective novel. It will keep you turning pages.

When a German SS officer is found dead in the Louvre, French robbery detective Henri LeFort is moved to the Paris Homoicide department, and told, solve this in a week or you will be killed.

It's soon after the Germans walked into France in 1940 and took over. Lefort is forbidden access to the gallery, and given a list of suspects, making him think this is both a pointless exercise that will result in the inevitable murder by the Germans of one of one or all of the suspects.

With the help of intrepid secretary Nicola, who has a good knowledge of art, Henri and she begin investigating. They also live together, something neither has informed the police department, or anyone else about.

At the same time, the person Henri meets at the outset of the book, Marie ("Mimi") Bonaparte, a distant relation of that Bonaparte, and whose house was being robbed, convinces Henri to work with her. She has trained with Sigmund Freud, and Lefort's experiences in WW1 has clearly left mental scars on the detective. She proposes to help him, and this allows the author to give us Lefort's painful backstory, and explain his current glibness, and tendency to poke authority in the eye.

I've never read anything by Mark Pryor before, but I thought the setup was intriguing, of a police procedural set during the German occupation of France during WWII, and the prose flowed well. I liked the inclusion of actual people in the mystery (Picasso, Mimi, etc.), and how Henri must navigate the touchy and dangerous situation between the French and the Germans to solve the mystery. Along the way, we get a picture of a man holding secrets, and suffering from trauma from WW1, but also a somewhat revitalized Henri by the end of the book. I also particularly liked the twist Pryor gave us near the end, and how that was dealt with, leaving me to wonder, what's next for Detective Henri Lefort and Nicola?

Thank you to St. Martin's Press and to Netgalley for this ARC in exchange for my review.

I really love historical fiction, so I was really looking forward to reading Die Around Sundown, especially as it was written by Mark Pryor, who is a great writer. Not only did I enjoyed the setting of the book and the mystery aspect of it, but I thought Pryor did a great job of pulling in the reader. I felt like the conversational tone between the characters, especially Henri was a little stilted at times, which made it hard to read the novel, but I really enjoyed the fact that the end was set up for more. This was a quintessential whodunit and the character’s banter/conversational tones will only get better over the next few books.

Can a murder mystery be pretentious? Try-hard? I'm not sure, but if it can, this one is. I'll confess to dnf-ing happily after the 3rd name-drop. The MCs key personality trait is cynicism through comedy. The mystery (I skipped ahead to see if I guessed right) is easily worked out and the telling just isn't worth the eye rolling.

**Thank you NetGalley and St. Martin's Press for the eARC**

I found Die Around Sundown a very fascinating read. Set in Paris in the early days of the WWII Nazi occupation a detective on the Paris police force is given the task of finding the murderer of a German major in 5 days. There are many twists and turns in this story along with a back story from WWI which is very surprising. The characters are intriguing and everyone has a hidden background; Henri, Nicola, Mimi and even Picasso! You never knew what was going to happen next in this story. It’s a great read and a great mystery.

“Ironic, then, that the moments of actual peace, of real respite, in this awful blood-soaked war would come at sundown, both sides tired of raining bombs and bullets on each other all day, grateful for that still beautiful moment when the blood stopped flowing and the only red we saw spread itself across the horizon as a signal that we’d managed to live a little longer.”


This one is a new take on a WWII novel.

It’s less about the war and more about solving a mystery. And I thoroughly enjoyed it!


Inspector Henry Lefort has survived WWI and finds himself as a police detective in Nazi occupied Paris during WWII. As the Germans are packing up art from the Louvre, one of them is found shot. Lefort is forced to solve the crime in a matter of days or face the wrath of the Nazis.

To his dismay he is not allowed access to the crime scene and is only given a short list of suspects. But if he wants to live to next week he will have to get creative in getting to the bottom of a crime he almost wished he had done himself.

“My irritation was growing and something else was, too, a darker fear that I was being drawn into a game too dangerous for any parlor. No, not a game. A trap.”


Another thread throughout this book is his relationship with Princess Marie Bonaparte— psychoanalyst who studied under Freud and great-grand niece of the famous Napoleon (she is a real person). Lefort’s (undiagnosed) misophonia is intriguing to her and they make a deal where he agrees to talk with her in exchange for good wine and food with rationing on the horizon.

This reminded me a little of the Ian Rutledge series as he is a detective with an atypical PTSD challenge from his time in WWI.

He tells her of a mission gone wrong in WWI where he was the only survivor of his group. The story unfolds interspersed in the book. It’s important because a local journalist begins harassing Lefort about secrets he is hiding and threatens to expose.



While there was more language than I would have liked, there were a lot of good components to this story. I think this will be a fun series to continue.

Lefort is a good character. He has his cynicism and war-hardened side, but he is also kind and witty and has good intuitions. Plus his background is a bit mysterious and has potential to come back in future books.

Considering how much Lefort despises the Germans (who he refers to as cabbage crunchers, goose-steppers, and SS psychos), it will be interesting to see what other trouble Lefort gets himself into as the series continues. He has a responsibility as a police officer to do their bidding but he’ll find his own way to resist.



I thought it was interesting that Pryor decided to include Pablo Picasso in this story and thought it was clever the way he tied him in.

One of Picasso’s most famous paintings is Guernica which has become a symbol of anti-war as it depicts human suffering, especially by the innocent, during war times.

This is fitting within the context of the story.

While the story is fiction, Picasso did stay in France during WWII even though he was not allowed to show his work. He helped the French resistance in whatever ways he could. I read one article that said he was often questioned by the Gestapo and one particular time the Gestapo saw a picture of Guernica in his apartment and asked ‘Did you do that?’ To which Picasso replied, ‘No, you did.’



As an art major, I enjoy books that thread discussion of art in their books. Although, I wish I had paid more attention in my art history classes. There were several references to other artists and works that I had vague memory of but no context.

Pryor incorporated this real quote from Picasso:

“You believe art is decoration. Adornment. It is not. It is power. A weapon. Painting is an instrument of war for attack or defense.”

This is contrary to what I said in my college art show as I prefer realism and paintings that people like to look at and hang in their house. I don’t make art to express my feelings or make political statements. But at the same time, especially during a time where art was censored, I can see how art can be used as a weapon under the right circumstances. And imagery can be very powerful when words are absent.

But I tend to prefer words when making a point and making ‘meaningful’ art in the sense of ‘powerful’ sounds too exhausting to me right now.



I liked how we get to see Lefort wrestle with his hatred for the Germans and yet seeing their humanity.

“Like every Parisian, I found it easy to despise the German war machine that had steamrollered through our country and taken possession of its beautiful capital city. But a machine is made up of many parts and not all of them are destructive.”

It’s an uncomfortable thing to think about because it’s easier and feels better to just hate all the Germans/Nazis and what they represented. But so many of them were just trying to survive too. It’s likely that not all of the Nazis were killing machines. This doesn’t excuse the actions taken against the innocent, but I like that Pryor challenges us to see their humanity.


There are probably a lot of you who are tired of WWII fiction, but I would still give this one a chance! I enjoyed it and would recommend.


[Content Advisory: 23 f-words, 25 s-words, no sexual content]

**Received an ARC via NetGalley**

This opens a new historical mystery series, set in World War II German-occupied Paris, and starring French police Inspector Henri Lefort. In the summer of 1940, There is constant tension between cops and conquerors.

The Germans insist that Lefort investigate the murder of a German major in the Louvre, giving him one week to solve it - or else!

The investigation involves Lefort with Pablo Picasso, as well Princess Marie Bonaparte (Napoleon's great-grand-niece).

The Inspector does solve the case, and there are intriguing revelations about his own past that will leave readers anxious for a sequel.

If you are a fan of detective novels and also love historical fiction books then you need to read this book. Die Around Sundown follows the story of French police detective Henri in nazi occupied Paris. Henri is assigned to a robbery case that eventually turned into a murder case at the home of a French princess and psychologist Mimi. After saving her life, Henri agrees to see Mimi as a patient and share his story from the first war in exchange for her help obtaining rationed supplies. Subconsciously, a German officer is murdered at the Louvre and Henri is assigned to the case but there’s a catch- he only has a week to solve the crime and he can’t step foot in the crime scene.

This is the start of a detective series set in nazi occupied Paris following Henri Lefort, his sister and police secretary Nicola and psychologist Mimi. In Henri’s sessions with Mimi we got his backstory and were able to get a better understanding of him and how he views what is happening. I’m interested to see where their story goes next.


Thank you @minotaur_books and @netgalley for this eARC in exchange for my honest feedback.

I didn't think I would like this one as much as I did. I enjoyed the characters and setting. I think there were some times when the story ran a little off course, but overall a good historical fiction mystery.

Nice beginning for a series, looking forward to follow-up books.
This story brings to our vision the daily life of Paris in the early days of occupation. The feelings of the French towards the Germans and the helplessness to do much about it without risking their live.
Also, with only 22 years between the two wars made it that many had survive World War 1 as young adults to see it all happening again. I enjoyed the introduction of some historical figures within the story as Marie Bonaparte (even did some research on her) and her link to Freud. She uses her expertise to do some psychoanalyst sessions with Henri to have him overcome some of his issues. We all know that the Germans stole the paintings from the museums in the occupied countries and the Louvre was no exception. So, it could have been a possibility that Pablo Picasso created some reproductions of the masters so that the reproduction would be the ones stolen and not the originals. An interesting idea.
Henri is a survivor and even after been setup as a scapegoat by a corrupt Gestapo he manages to turn the tide in his favor.

This historical mystery is a page turner. Inspector Lefort has a week to solve the murder of a Nazi art historian sending art from the Louvre. This assignment has been given to him, a French police officer, by a German major.
With the underground and collaborators galore, he is working against time as Hitler will be coming to Paris.

I don't often read historical fiction novels set during the war however, I really enjoyed this murder mystery. I found the mc, Henri, witty and hilarious. The stakes of this case are very high and he doesn't have much time or resources which really adds to the suspense of the story.

I recommend this book to historical fiction/WWII fans, it is set during World War II German-occupied France in the summer of 1940.

Inspector Henri Lefort, who is known for his expertise in investigating robberies has been recruited by the Nazis (against his wishes) to solve a high-level murder case!

The clock is ticking, his neck is on the chopping block, he has only five days to solve the murder. Should he take the easy out or stick to his moral compass and find the truth?

A unique police procedural with some art deals, famous named characters, and some flashbacks that reveal Henri's own mysterious past.


Thanks to Netgalley and the publisher for an advanced copy of this book,