By Way of Paris

The perfect crime story is written from experience.

Luke’s life in North Carolina sucks until things start to look up when he sets off for a writing program in London, spending the month before his course exploring Europe. But his dream trip quickly derails in Paris after he discovers a body at a party and is blackmailed into hiding the evidence.

Arriving in London, Luke decides that crafting the perfect novel will help him overcome the Paris catastrophe. He befriends Shane, a gang leader, and shadows a band of criminals as research for his manuscript. Luke finds a family with the young gang, but this new world is filled with violence and toxic masculinity, which strains his academic career, eventually entangling him in the London underworld as he embarks on a slew of crimes, making dangerous enemies along the way.

When friends start dying and detectives begin calling, Luke is forced back to France, realizing that he’s not the hero of his own story. Searching for an ending that could free his friends from Shane, Luke wants to bring justice to the murder that happened … by way of Paris.

Christopher J. Newman was born and raised in North Carolina where he began writing stories from the back row of his high school math and science classes. What began as a hobby quickly turned into an obsession and Newman's passion for storytelling took on two specific forms; novel writing and filmmaking. He spent the next ten years working as a freelance filmmaker by day and writing novels by night.

In 2019, Newman decided to pursue writing further and moved to the United Kingdom to earn his Master's Degree in Creative Writing from Bath Spa University. His year and a half spent abroad provided the inspiration for his debut novel, BY WAY OF PARIS. The novel served as his dissertation for his master's program and was awarded a distinction.

Newman currently works in marketing for a non-profit organization, moonlights as a freelance filmmaker, and works part-time as a university instructor, where he teaches storytelling through film.