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The City of Blood

This book counts for the following Reading Challenges:

MY THOUGHTS ABOUT THIS BOOK

After reading Crossing The Line last year, it was real fun meeting again chief of police Nico Sirsky and his team in The City of Blood. Famous French author Frédérique Molay has a real knack for making her thrillers irresistible page-turners, plus you learn a lot about Paris, here about Parc de la Villette, and a rather unique form of art.

“Daniel Spoerri is a Swiss artist and writer born 1930 in Romania. He is best known for his “snare-pictures,” a type of assemblage or object art, in which he captures a group of objects, such as the remains of meals eaten by individuals, including the plates, silverware and glasses, all of which are fixed to the table or board, which is then displayed on a wall.” (source: wikipedia).
His work inspired this thriller: 30 years ago, artist Samuel Cassian invited 120 guests (artists, journalists, politicians) to put an end to his “snare-pictures”. He decided to have all the remains of their meal buried in a park, to be dug up later, as a time capsule. Now time has come for the excavation, but among the remains and the silverware, a body is found.

Samuel’s son disappeared just a week after that special reception, so could it be his body? But why? And what could possibly be the connection with the series of murders of young homosexuals happening now in the same park, if there’s any?

I really loved the suspense, as suspects multiply with each new murder and each new clue.

But on top of the plot, what I really enjoy in Molay’s books is the details and the ambiance. Here, she did an amazing job with the setting of Parc de la Villette. From 1867 (until Napoleon III) until 1974, the area was a center of slaughterhouses, a so-called City of Blood. Then it became a wasteland until it was converted into a park for leisure, culture, and recreation, currently very alive.
I guess that was a good idea to use this as the title of this thriller, but the French title was really cool: Déjeuner sous l’herbe (The Luncheon under the Grass), awesome for the meal buried and great play on words with the famous painting by Monet, The Luncheon on the Grass. It pains me that maybe the translator thought American lovers of thrillers would not have enough culture to get it. As a translator myself, I wondered what other solution I could have chosen, and I came up with a cultural reference that should for sure resonate with American readers: As I Lay Eating. What do you think?

But to go back to the book, there’s a very interesting double plot going on with Anya, Nico’s mother. She suffered a heart attack. Through this ordeal, he experiences the fear and pain that Samuel may be going through, if it happens that the dead man was his son. Nico makes a deal with God to do all he can to identify the victim’s killer and in return to have his mother recover. That was an unexpected dimension that I really enjoyed, and it really gave lots of depth to the character of Nico. As an Orthodox believer myself, it was doubly neat to hear about Nico’s Orthodox upbringing and go with him revisit the Saint Sergius Orthodox Theological Institute in Paris (founded in 1925). Seriously, I would never have imagined hearing about this awesome place in a thriller/crime fiction!

But if you need a counter-balance, keep in mind that Nico had also to visit gay nightclubs to get clues on the killer! Quite an interesting mix, isn’t it?

And of course you have all the details about the French police system, and the work of each participant, be it the criminal psychologist, the public prosecutor, or the guys in charge of forensics anthropology. Fascinating how much you can learn about a person just by observing his/her bones! The scene of the autopsy was also fascinating, but quite gruesome…

VERDICT: Choosing a famous park in Paris as her setting, famous French writer Frédérique Molay assigns another intriguing crime investigation to chief of police Nico Sirsky. Mix blood, art, and even religion, and you have an irresistible page-turner.

WHAT IS IT ABOUT

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