(I received a free copy of this book from Net Galley in exchange for an honest review.)

Paris, April 1999: Aimée Leduc has her work cut out for her—running her detective agency and fighting off sleep deprivation as she tries to be a good single mother to her new bébé. The last thing she has time for now is to take on a personal investigation for a poor manouche (Gypsy) boy. But he insists his dying mother has an important secret she needs to tell Aimée, something to do with Aimée's father's unsolved murder a decade ago. How can she say no?
The dying woman's secret is even more dangerous than her son realized. When Aimée arrives at the hospital, the boy's mother has disappeared. She was far too sick to leave on her own—she must have been abducted. What does she know that's so important it's worth killing for? And will Aimée be able to find her before it's too late and the medication keeping her alive runs out?

Let me start by saying that this is a good story - the mystery is really well constructed. It had me trying to guess the ending all the way through and that is no mean feat for me, having read hundreds of mysteries over the years. Also, the development of Aimee's personal story has come a long way from those early novels and there is some real depth to her character now.

Two things, however, spoiled this somewhat for me. One, the endless monologue of Aimee's about how bad a mother she is and her concern about what would happen to the baby if something were to happen to her...and she does nothing about it. For the first few times I understood how she felt - I'm a parent, too - but it was incessant and very frustrating. The other thing was the attempts at throwing in French language to prove hat we were in Paris? I think the author could have shown some more respect to the reader and acknowledged that we are aware of the setting - the language, especially if you don't know French - can be off-putting.

Even so, as far as a mystery (which is what I came for) was pretty good and there is some real reward when you get to the end. And I liked that.


Paul
ARH