Murder on the Champ de Mars - Cara Black

I recently reviewed the previous book in this series and decided that I had had about enough of the protagonist, Aimee Leduc.  She now has a 6-month-old daughter, Chloe, who hasn't slowed Aimee down much at all.  She's still climbing over walls, racing around on her scooter, and putting herself in jeopardy.  The baby's father, Aimee's ex-sometimes-boyfriend, shows up with his new wife to claim shared custody of his daughter.  Aimee is freaked out, but she also questions whether Chloe would be better off living a safe life in the country.  Most of her time with Aimee in Paris is spent in child care.

Aimee is still trying to find out who was responsible for her father's death, killed in an explosion ten years ago.  A young Gypsy boy tells her that his mother, Drina, is dying and wants to talk to Aimee about her father's death before she dies.  She promised Aimee's father that she would tell Aimee the truth.  Aimee goes to the hospital but the woman is missing.  Aimee finds her and hears her last words.  But they're puzzling, something about Tesla and Fifi, and some is in the Romany language.

She enlists some of her father's old friends to find out what happened.  Over the years since her father's death, they've been family to her.  A cover up was involved, but who was involved in the cover up?  Who are Tesla and Fifi?

Murder on the Champ de Mars moves along at a nice pace.  I thought it was more interesting and better plotted than some of the others in the series.  There are parts where I couldn't stop reading.  I think I'll suspend my decision to stop reading about Aimee Leduc and see if I like the next one.

Murder in Pigalle - Cara Black

I've been reading this series for several years now.  I started reading it because it takes place in Paris,  the main characters are Aimee Leduc and Rene Friant, a dwarf, and because the scattered French words give me a chance to pretend I'm still fairly fluent in French.  I spent a week in Paris many years ago and I remember enough about it to occasionally picture where the action takes place.  From book to book, the crimes move from one arrondissement to another.  There's always a map in the front.

Aimee and Rene run a computer security business together, but Aimee is always finding her way into real life crime.  Rene often bails her out, often with the help of Saj, another computer expert.  I like both Rene and Saj better than I like Aimee.

In this episode, Aimee is pregnant.  The father is her on-again-off-again boyfriend whose priorities are his ex-wife and daughter.  The daughter is in a coma and the ex-wife is needy.  Aimee hasn't told him that she's pregnant.  She knows that she needs more than he will give her.

In the midst of all this (and a broiling hot summer, too), Zazie, her friend's daughter and Aimee's protege, disappears.  (Please note that she didn't 'go missing' in this review.  We used to say 'disappear', which is a perfectly good word, but it seems to have 'gone missing' from our vocabulary.) Because there have been several rapes of young girls in the area, Aimee is concerned that Zazie is a victim of the rapist.  Zazie doesn't fit the profile of 12 years old, blonde, and violin-playing, but Aimee is convinced Zazie has been taken by the rapist.  And she's wrong.

I like the details of everyday life in Paris.  I wish there were bakeries on every corner in my city.  I love good fresh bread.  But I'm glad I don't live in a gorgeous freezing-in-the-winter and melting-in-the-summer apartment where the elevator is often broken.

Aimee gets a little tiresome sometimes.  Her Chanel red lipstick, her designer clothes, even if they're from thrift stores, her constantly feeding her little dog horse meat from the butcher.  She's always scaling buildings or jumping from roofs.  She puts herself and others in danger because she's impulsive and jumps to conclusions.  I'll give her one more book and then I think I've had enough.  Then again, I wonder how she's going to fit a baby into her life.