An Aimée Leduc Investigation
Latest release: March 5, 2024
Series
21
Books
About this ebook series
Meet Aimée Leduc, the smart, stylish Parisian private investigator, in her bestselling first investigation
Aimée Leduc has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation—no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client’s house in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.
Aimée Leduc has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation—no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client’s house in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.
Murder in the Marais
Book 1 · Jul 2003 ·
4.2star
Meet Aimée Leduc, the smart, stylish Parisian private investigator, in her bestselling first investigation
Aimée Leduc has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation—no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client’s house in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.
Aimée Leduc has always sworn she would stick to tech investigation—no criminal cases for her. Especially since her father, the late police detective, was killed in the line of duty. But when an elderly Jewish man approaches Aimée with a top-secret decoding job on behalf of a woman in his synagogue, Aimée unwittingly takes on more than she is expecting. She drops off her findings at her client’s house in the Marais, Paris’s historic Jewish quarter, and finds the woman strangled, a swastika carved on her forehead. With the help of her partner, René, Aimée sets out to solve this horrendous murder, but finds herself in an increasingly dangerous web of ancient secrets and buried war crimes.
Murder in Belleville
Book 2 · Jul 2003 ·
5.0star
The second Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris
When Anaïs de Froissart calls Parisian private investigator Aimée begging for help, Aimée assumes the woman wants to hire her to do surveillance on her philandering politician husband again. Aimée is too busy right now to indulge her. But Anaïs insists Aimée must come, that she is in trouble and scared. Aimée tracks Anaïs down just in time to see a car bomb explode, injuring Anaïs and killing the woman she was with.
Anaïs can’t explain what Aimée just witnessed. The dead woman, Anaïs says, is Sylvie Coudray, her cheating husband’s long-time mistress, but she has no idea who wanted her dead, and Anaïs officially hires Aimée to investigate. As she digs into Sylvie Coudray’s murky past, Aimée finds that the dead woman may not be who Anaïs thought she was. Her Belleville neighborhood, full of North African immigrants, may be hiding clues to Sylvie’s identity. As a prominent Algerian rights activist stages a hunger protest against new immigration laws, Aimée begins to wonder whether Sylvie’s death was an act of terrorism, and who else may be at risk.
When Anaïs de Froissart calls Parisian private investigator Aimée begging for help, Aimée assumes the woman wants to hire her to do surveillance on her philandering politician husband again. Aimée is too busy right now to indulge her. But Anaïs insists Aimée must come, that she is in trouble and scared. Aimée tracks Anaïs down just in time to see a car bomb explode, injuring Anaïs and killing the woman she was with.
Anaïs can’t explain what Aimée just witnessed. The dead woman, Anaïs says, is Sylvie Coudray, her cheating husband’s long-time mistress, but she has no idea who wanted her dead, and Anaïs officially hires Aimée to investigate. As she digs into Sylvie Coudray’s murky past, Aimée finds that the dead woman may not be who Anaïs thought she was. Her Belleville neighborhood, full of North African immigrants, may be hiding clues to Sylvie’s identity. As a prominent Algerian rights activist stages a hunger protest against new immigration laws, Aimée begins to wonder whether Sylvie’s death was an act of terrorism, and who else may be at risk.
Murder in the Sentier
Book 3 · Jul 2003 ·
4.0star
The third Aimée Leduc Investigation set in Paris
When Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc picks up the phone one hot July afternoon, the call turns her life upside-down. The voice on the other end, with its heavy German accent, belongs to a woman named Jutta Hald. Jutta claims to have shared a jail cell with Aimée’s long-lost mother, a suspected terrorist on Interpol’s most wanted list. If Aimée wants to learn the truth about her mother, she is to meet Jutta at a rendezvous point in an ancient tower in the Sentier. But when Aimée arrives, Jutta is dead, shot in the head at close range.
Aimée realizes she has stumbled into something bigger than Jutta let on, and that her own life is in danger. She has a lot of unsolved mysteries in front of her: Jutta Hald’s murder, resurfaced materials from Sydney Leduc’s terrorist activities in the 1970s, police suppression of important information. The question is, can Aimée put the pieces together before someone else ends up dead?
When Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc picks up the phone one hot July afternoon, the call turns her life upside-down. The voice on the other end, with its heavy German accent, belongs to a woman named Jutta Hald. Jutta claims to have shared a jail cell with Aimée’s long-lost mother, a suspected terrorist on Interpol’s most wanted list. If Aimée wants to learn the truth about her mother, she is to meet Jutta at a rendezvous point in an ancient tower in the Sentier. But when Aimée arrives, Jutta is dead, shot in the head at close range.
Aimée realizes she has stumbled into something bigger than Jutta let on, and that her own life is in danger. She has a lot of unsolved mysteries in front of her: Jutta Hald’s murder, resurfaced materials from Sydney Leduc’s terrorist activities in the 1970s, police suppression of important information. The question is, can Aimée put the pieces together before someone else ends up dead?
Murder in the Bastille
Book 4 · Apr 2004 ·
5.0star
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc is attacked and blinded during an investigation. Can she solve her case without her sight—and when her own life is in danger?
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is all dressed up in her new Chinese silk jacket, supposedly a designer’s “exclusive,” for dinner with a difficult client at an elegant restaurant in the Bastille district. She is chagrined to see that the woman seated at the very next table is wearing an identical jacket. When the woman leaves her cell phone on the table, Aimée follows her to return it and is attacked in the shadowy Passage Boule Blanche. When she regains consciousness, Aimée finds that she is blind. Nevertheless, she is told she is lucky; the woman she was following was found in the next passage, murdered.
Aimée is determined to identify her attacker. Was he actually a serial killer targeting showy blondes, as the police insist? Was he really after the other woman? Or was Aimée his intended victim?
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is all dressed up in her new Chinese silk jacket, supposedly a designer’s “exclusive,” for dinner with a difficult client at an elegant restaurant in the Bastille district. She is chagrined to see that the woman seated at the very next table is wearing an identical jacket. When the woman leaves her cell phone on the table, Aimée follows her to return it and is attacked in the shadowy Passage Boule Blanche. When she regains consciousness, Aimée finds that she is blind. Nevertheless, she is told she is lucky; the woman she was following was found in the next passage, murdered.
Aimée is determined to identify her attacker. Was he actually a serial killer targeting showy blondes, as the police insist? Was he really after the other woman? Or was Aimée his intended victim?
Murder in Clichy
Book 5 · Mar 2006 ·
3.5star
A botched assignment leaves Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc in possession of a cache of priceless Vietnamese jade. The jade’s history is steeped in colonial bloodshed—and someone is willing to spill even more blood to get it back
Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple in Paris by her partner, René Friant. He urges her to learn to meditate: she could use a more healthful approach to life. The Vietnamese nun Linh has been helping Aimée to attain her goal, so when she asks Aimée for a favor—to go to the Clichy quartier to exchange an envelope for a package—René prompts Aimée to agree. But the intended recipient, Thadée Baret, is shot and dies in Aimée’s arms before the transaction can be completed, leaving Aimée with a wounded arm, a check for 50,000 francs, and a trove of ancient jade artifacts.
Whoever killed Baret wants the jade. The RG—the French secret service—a group of veterans of the war in Indochina and some wealthy ex-colonials and international corporations seeking oil rights are all implicated. And the nun, Linh, has disappeared.
Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been introduced to the Cao Dai temple in Paris by her partner, René Friant. He urges her to learn to meditate: she could use a more healthful approach to life. The Vietnamese nun Linh has been helping Aimée to attain her goal, so when she asks Aimée for a favor—to go to the Clichy quartier to exchange an envelope for a package—René prompts Aimée to agree. But the intended recipient, Thadée Baret, is shot and dies in Aimée’s arms before the transaction can be completed, leaving Aimée with a wounded arm, a check for 50,000 francs, and a trove of ancient jade artifacts.
Whoever killed Baret wants the jade. The RG—the French secret service—a group of veterans of the war in Indochina and some wealthy ex-colonials and international corporations seeking oil rights are all implicated. And the nun, Linh, has disappeared.
Murder in Montmartre
Book 6 · Mar 2007 ·
0.0star
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc strives to clear the name of a childhood friend, now a policewoman, who's charged with shooting her partner
Aimée Leduc is having a bad day. First, she comes home from work at her Paris detective agency to learn that her boyfriend is leaving her. She goes out for a drink with her friend Laure, a police officer, but Laure’s patrol partner, Jacques, interrupts, saying he needs to talk to Laure urgently. The two leave the bar, and when they don’t return, Aimée follows Laure’s path and finds her sprawled on a snowy rooftop, not far from Jacques, who is bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound.
When the police arrive, they arrest Laure for murder. No one is interested in helping Aimée figure out the truth. As she chases down increasingly dangerous leads in the effort to free her friend, Aimée stumbles into a web of Corsican nationalists, separatists, gangsters, and artists. Could Jacques’s murder and Laure’s arrest be part of a much bigger cover-up?
Aimée Leduc is having a bad day. First, she comes home from work at her Paris detective agency to learn that her boyfriend is leaving her. She goes out for a drink with her friend Laure, a police officer, but Laure’s patrol partner, Jacques, interrupts, saying he needs to talk to Laure urgently. The two leave the bar, and when they don’t return, Aimée follows Laure’s path and finds her sprawled on a snowy rooftop, not far from Jacques, who is bleeding from a fatal gunshot wound.
When the police arrive, they arrest Laure for murder. No one is interested in helping Aimée figure out the truth. As she chases down increasingly dangerous leads in the effort to free her friend, Aimée stumbles into a web of Corsican nationalists, separatists, gangsters, and artists. Could Jacques’s murder and Laure’s arrest be part of a much bigger cover-up?
Murder on the Ile Saint-Louis
Book 7 · Mar 2007 ·
0.0star
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc finds herself caring for an abandoned infant while trying to track down the child’s missing mother
Aimée Leduc is on a tight work deadline when an anonymous call leads her to an abandoned infant in her building's courtyard. Aimée's search for little Stella's mother that will soon have her on the run from a cold-hearted killer and embroiled in a conflict between oil tycoons and environmental protesters.
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is working on a tight deadline for a cybersecurity contract when she gets a phone call that disrupts all her progress. The female voice on the other end begs Aimée to go out into her courtyard, insists that her life is in danger, that Aimée must not call the police, then hangs up. Aimée’s project is in jeopardy, and her partner, René, will be furious if she botches this assignment, but she can’t ignore the distress in the mysterious caller’s voice. That doesn’t mean she’s prepared for what she finds in the courtyard, though: a newborn baby, wrapped in a blood-stained beaded jacket.
Aimée wants to track down the baby’s mother, but when a young woman’s body washes up in the Seine on the shores of the Ile Saint-Louis, the little island where Aimée herself lives, she realizes the situation is very dangerous. Paris has been rife with bomb threats linked to protesting environmental groups, and with a little investigating Aimée becomes convinced the baby, the body in the Seine, and the protests are somehow linked. Not that Aimée can afford distraction from her paying work right now--Leduc Detective is in bad financial straits. But despite themselves, Aimée and René have both fallen in love with the baby girl, whom Aimee nicknames Stella. Taking care of Stella’s needs—and protecting her from whoever hurt or killed her missing mother—must take priority over their computer security contract with a big publicity firm. Meanwhile, she’s following leads to the infant’s mother that take her to a radical dispossessed Polish prince, a community of homeless people who live in the sewer caves of the Seine, and a sexy documentary film maker. Can Aimée finish her security job, figure out who Stella belongs to, track down the missing mother, and protect herself and her friends from the danger that is circling them, all while juggling a newborn infant?
Aimée Leduc is on a tight work deadline when an anonymous call leads her to an abandoned infant in her building's courtyard. Aimée's search for little Stella's mother that will soon have her on the run from a cold-hearted killer and embroiled in a conflict between oil tycoons and environmental protesters.
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is working on a tight deadline for a cybersecurity contract when she gets a phone call that disrupts all her progress. The female voice on the other end begs Aimée to go out into her courtyard, insists that her life is in danger, that Aimée must not call the police, then hangs up. Aimée’s project is in jeopardy, and her partner, René, will be furious if she botches this assignment, but she can’t ignore the distress in the mysterious caller’s voice. That doesn’t mean she’s prepared for what she finds in the courtyard, though: a newborn baby, wrapped in a blood-stained beaded jacket.
Aimée wants to track down the baby’s mother, but when a young woman’s body washes up in the Seine on the shores of the Ile Saint-Louis, the little island where Aimée herself lives, she realizes the situation is very dangerous. Paris has been rife with bomb threats linked to protesting environmental groups, and with a little investigating Aimée becomes convinced the baby, the body in the Seine, and the protests are somehow linked. Not that Aimée can afford distraction from her paying work right now--Leduc Detective is in bad financial straits. But despite themselves, Aimée and René have both fallen in love with the baby girl, whom Aimee nicknames Stella. Taking care of Stella’s needs—and protecting her from whoever hurt or killed her missing mother—must take priority over their computer security contract with a big publicity firm. Meanwhile, she’s following leads to the infant’s mother that take her to a radical dispossessed Polish prince, a community of homeless people who live in the sewer caves of the Seine, and a sexy documentary film maker. Can Aimée finish her security job, figure out who Stella belongs to, track down the missing mother, and protect herself and her friends from the danger that is circling them, all while juggling a newborn infant?
Murder in the Rue de Paradis
Book 8 · Mar 2008 ·
0.0star
Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc is head-over-heels when a former boyfriend, an investigative journalist, reappears and proposes—but his professional past has caught up with him, and now Aimée must figure out who would want him dead
Aimée Leduc seems to be having a streak of good luck. First, she secures a lucrative computer security contract for her Paris detective agency. Then her ex-boyfriend Yves, the gorgeous bad-boy investigative journalist, reappears in her life. He insists he’s back in Paris indefinitely—and wants to make the ultimate commitment. He proposes to her that very night, and Aimée can’t help but say yes.
When she wakes up in the morning, though, Yves is gone without even leaving a note. Aimée is irate until she learns the awful truth: Yves was murdered early that morning. Heartbroken and convinced the Brigade Criminelle are not following the right leads, Aimée pursues the mystery behind her fiancé’s murder. Yves was killed trying to further a cause he believed in. Even if it means putting her own life on the line, Aimée won’t let him die in vain.
Aimée Leduc seems to be having a streak of good luck. First, she secures a lucrative computer security contract for her Paris detective agency. Then her ex-boyfriend Yves, the gorgeous bad-boy investigative journalist, reappears in her life. He insists he’s back in Paris indefinitely—and wants to make the ultimate commitment. He proposes to her that very night, and Aimée can’t help but say yes.
When she wakes up in the morning, though, Yves is gone without even leaving a note. Aimée is irate until she learns the awful truth: Yves was murdered early that morning. Heartbroken and convinced the Brigade Criminelle are not following the right leads, Aimée pursues the mystery behind her fiancé’s murder. Yves was killed trying to further a cause he believed in. Even if it means putting her own life on the line, Aimée won’t let him die in vain.
Murder in the Latin Quarter
Book 9 · Mar 2009 ·
0.0star
The ninth Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris
A Haitian woman arrives at the office of Leduc Detective proclaiming that she is Aimée Leduc’s sister, her father’s illegitimate daughter. Though her partner, René, is wary of this stranger, Aimée is thrilled; she has always wanted a sister. But before Aimée can get to know her, Mireille disappears. Worried about her sister and eager to learn if what she says is true, Aimée follows the only clue she has: a note Mireille left behind. On the note is the address to a university research center in the Latin Quarter; in the building, Aimée finds a corpse without an ear. This compelling mystery weaves together Haitian politics, history, and culture as Aimée tries to piece together what happened and searches for the sister she never knew she had.
A Haitian woman arrives at the office of Leduc Detective proclaiming that she is Aimée Leduc’s sister, her father’s illegitimate daughter. Though her partner, René, is wary of this stranger, Aimée is thrilled; she has always wanted a sister. But before Aimée can get to know her, Mireille disappears. Worried about her sister and eager to learn if what she says is true, Aimée follows the only clue she has: a note Mireille left behind. On the note is the address to a university research center in the Latin Quarter; in the building, Aimée finds a corpse without an ear. This compelling mystery weaves together Haitian politics, history, and culture as Aimée tries to piece together what happened and searches for the sister she never knew she had.
Murder in the Palais Royal
Book 10 · Mar 2010 ·
4.0star
Just as Aimée is about to leave for New York City to follow up on a lead about a possible younger brother, her partner in Leduc Detective, René Friant, is wounded by a near-fatal gun shot. Eyewitnesses identify Aimée as the culprit. The police have pegged her as the guilty party. Aimée is distraught over René’s condition and horrified to be under suspicion.
At the same time, a large, mysterious sum appears in their firm’s bank account, and the tax authorities descend upon Aimée. She has no idea who would have sent this money.
It seems that someone is impersonating Aimée, someone who wants revenge. But for what? Two murders ensue. How do they relate to the youth whom Aimée’s testimony sent to jail in the very first Aimée Leduc investigation, Murder in the Marais?
At the same time, a large, mysterious sum appears in their firm’s bank account, and the tax authorities descend upon Aimée. She has no idea who would have sent this money.
It seems that someone is impersonating Aimée, someone who wants revenge. But for what? Two murders ensue. How do they relate to the youth whom Aimée’s testimony sent to jail in the very first Aimée Leduc investigation, Murder in the Marais?
Murder in Passy
Book 11 · Mar 2011 ·
5.0star
The eleventh Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris
Business is booming for Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc. But she finds time to do a favor for her godfather, Commissaire Morbier, who asks her to drop by the gorgeous Passy home of his girlfriend, Xavierre d’Eslay, a haut bourgeois matron of Basque origin. Xavierre has been so busy with her daughter’s upcoming wedding that she has stopped taking Morbier’s calls, and he’s worried something serious is going on. When Aimée crashes the rehearsal dinner, Xavierre is discovered strangled in her own yard, and circumstantial evidence makes Morbier the prime suspect. To vindicate her godfather, Aimée must find the real killer. Her investigation leads her to police corruption, radical Basque terrorists, and a kidnapped Spanish princess.
Business is booming for Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc. But she finds time to do a favor for her godfather, Commissaire Morbier, who asks her to drop by the gorgeous Passy home of his girlfriend, Xavierre d’Eslay, a haut bourgeois matron of Basque origin. Xavierre has been so busy with her daughter’s upcoming wedding that she has stopped taking Morbier’s calls, and he’s worried something serious is going on. When Aimée crashes the rehearsal dinner, Xavierre is discovered strangled in her own yard, and circumstantial evidence makes Morbier the prime suspect. To vindicate her godfather, Aimée must find the real killer. Her investigation leads her to police corruption, radical Basque terrorists, and a kidnapped Spanish princess.
Murder at the Lanterne Rouge
Book 12 · Mar 2012 ·
3.7star
The twelfth Aimée Leduc investigation set in Paris
Lost secrets of the Parisian Knights Templar, dangerous Chinatown sweatshops, dirty policemen, and botched affairs of the heart—the 12th Aimée Leduc mystery is the most exciting yet!
Aimée Leduc is happy her longtime business partner René has found a girlfriend. It’s not her fault if she can’t suppress her doubts about the relationship. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never returns to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway—with Meizi’s photo in his wallet.
Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can’t figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi’s disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France’s secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they’re keeping tabs on Aimée. What has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself—and her friends—back out of it alive?
Lost secrets of the Parisian Knights Templar, dangerous Chinatown sweatshops, dirty policemen, and botched affairs of the heart—the 12th Aimée Leduc mystery is the most exciting yet!
Aimée Leduc is happy her longtime business partner René has found a girlfriend. It’s not her fault if she can’t suppress her doubts about the relationship. And her misgivings may not be far off the mark: Meizi disappears during a Chinatown dinner to take a phone call and never returns to the restaurant. Minutes later, the body of a young man, a science prodigy and volunteer at the nearby Musée, is found shrink-wrapped in an alleyway—with Meizi’s photo in his wallet.
Aimée does not like this scenario one bit, but she can’t figure out how the murder is connected to Meizi’s disappearance. The dead genius was sitting on a discovery that has France’s secret service keeping tabs on him. Now they’re keeping tabs on Aimée. What has she gotten herself into? And can she get herself—and her friends—back out of it alive?
Murder Below Montparnasse
Book 13 · Mar 2013 ·
5.0star
A long-lost Modigliani portrait, a grieving brother’s blood vendetta, a Soviet secret that’s been buried for 80 years—Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc’s current case is her most exciting one yet.
The cobbled streets of Montparnasse might have been boho-chic in the 1920s, when artists, writers, and their muses drank absinthe and danced on cafe tables. But to Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc, these streets hold darker secrets. When an old Russian man named Yuri hires Aimée to protect a priceless painting that just might be a Modigliani, she learns how deadly art theft can be. Yuri is found tortured to death in his atelier, and the painting is missing. Every time Aimée thinks she's found a new witness, the body count rises. What exactly is so special about this painting that so many people are willing to kill—and die—for it?
Murder in Pigalle
Book 14 · Mar 2014 ·
3.0star
New York Times Bestseller Cara Black’s fashionable Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc has a new look for her 14th adventure: five months pregnant.
June, 1998: Paris’s sticky summer heat is even more oppressive than usual as rowdy French football fans riot in anticipation of the World Cup. Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been trying to slow down her hectic lifestyle—she’s five months pregnant and has the baby’s well-being to think about now. But then disaster strikes close to home. A serial rapist has been terrorizing Paris’s Pigalle neighborhood, following teenage girls home and attacking them in their own houses. Zazie, the 13-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aimée’s favorite café, has disappeared. The police aren’t mobilizing quickly enough, and when Zazie’s desperate parents approach Aimée for help, she knows she couldn’t say no even if she wanted to.
June, 1998: Paris’s sticky summer heat is even more oppressive than usual as rowdy French football fans riot in anticipation of the World Cup. Private investigator Aimée Leduc has been trying to slow down her hectic lifestyle—she’s five months pregnant and has the baby’s well-being to think about now. But then disaster strikes close to home. A serial rapist has been terrorizing Paris’s Pigalle neighborhood, following teenage girls home and attacking them in their own houses. Zazie, the 13-year-old daughter of the proprietor of Aimée’s favorite café, has disappeared. The police aren’t mobilizing quickly enough, and when Zazie’s desperate parents approach Aimée for help, she knows she couldn’t say no even if she wanted to.
Murder on the Champ de Mars
Book 15 · Mar 2015 ·
5.0star
A dying woman has secret about the unsolved murder of Parisian P.I. Aimée Leduc’s father, but is kidnapped before she can reveal it
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?
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?
Murder on the Quai
Book 16 · Jun 2016 ·
0.0star
The world knows Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc, heroine of 15 mysteries in this New York Times bestselling series, as a très chic, no-nonsense detective—the toughest and most relentless in the City of Lights. Now, author Cara Black dips back in time to reveal how Aimée first came to inherit Leduc Detective . . .
November 1989: Aimée Leduc is in her first year of college at Paris’s preeminent medical school. She lives in a 17th-century apartment that overlooks the Seine with her father, who runs the family detective agency.
But the week the Berlin Wall crumbles, so does Aimée’s life as she knows it. First, someone has sabotaged her lab work, putting her at risk of failing out of the program. Then, she finds out her aristo boyfriend is getting engaged to another woman. And finally, Aimée’s father takes off to Berlin on a mysterious errand. He asks Aimée to help out at the detective agency while he’s gone—as if she doesn’t already have enough to do. But the case Aimée finds herself investigating—a murder linked to a transport truck of Nazi gold that disappeared in the French countryside during the height of World War II—has gotten under her skin. Her heart may not lie in medicine after all—maybe it’s time to think harder about the family business.
November 1989: Aimée Leduc is in her first year of college at Paris’s preeminent medical school. She lives in a 17th-century apartment that overlooks the Seine with her father, who runs the family detective agency.
But the week the Berlin Wall crumbles, so does Aimée’s life as she knows it. First, someone has sabotaged her lab work, putting her at risk of failing out of the program. Then, she finds out her aristo boyfriend is getting engaged to another woman. And finally, Aimée’s father takes off to Berlin on a mysterious errand. He asks Aimée to help out at the detective agency while he’s gone—as if she doesn’t already have enough to do. But the case Aimée finds herself investigating—a murder linked to a transport truck of Nazi gold that disappeared in the French countryside during the height of World War II—has gotten under her skin. Her heart may not lie in medicine after all—maybe it’s time to think harder about the family business.
Murder in Saint-Germain
Book 17 · Jun 2017 ·
0.0star
A Los Angeles Times National Bestseller
A BBC Best Summer Read of 2017
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017
A Huffington Post Best Mystery of 2017
Paris, July 1999: Private investigator Aimée Leduc is walking through Saint-Germain when she is accosted by Suzanne Lesage, a Brigade Criminelle agent on an elite counterterrorism squad. Suzanne has just returned from the former Yugoslavia, where she was hunting down dangerous war criminals for the Hague. Back in Paris, Suzanne is convinced she’s being stalked by a ghost—a Serbian warlord her team took down. She’s suffering from PTSD and her boss thinks she’s imagining things. She begs Aimée to investigate—is it possible Mirko Vladić could be alive and in Paris with a blood vendetta?
Aimée is already working on a huge case; plus, she’s got an eight-month-old baby to take care of. But she can’t say no to Suzanne, whom she owes a big favor. Aimée chases the few leads she has, and all evidence confirms Mirko Vladić is dead. It seems that Suzanne is in fact paranoid, perhaps losing her mind—until Suzanne’s team begins to die in a series of strange, tragic accidents. Are these just coincidences? Or are things not what they seem?
A BBC Best Summer Read of 2017
A Kirkus Reviews Best Book of 2017
A Huffington Post Best Mystery of 2017
Paris, July 1999: Private investigator Aimée Leduc is walking through Saint-Germain when she is accosted by Suzanne Lesage, a Brigade Criminelle agent on an elite counterterrorism squad. Suzanne has just returned from the former Yugoslavia, where she was hunting down dangerous war criminals for the Hague. Back in Paris, Suzanne is convinced she’s being stalked by a ghost—a Serbian warlord her team took down. She’s suffering from PTSD and her boss thinks she’s imagining things. She begs Aimée to investigate—is it possible Mirko Vladić could be alive and in Paris with a blood vendetta?
Aimée is already working on a huge case; plus, she’s got an eight-month-old baby to take care of. But she can’t say no to Suzanne, whom she owes a big favor. Aimée chases the few leads she has, and all evidence confirms Mirko Vladić is dead. It seems that Suzanne is in fact paranoid, perhaps losing her mind—until Suzanne’s team begins to die in a series of strange, tragic accidents. Are these just coincidences? Or are things not what they seem?
Murder on the Left Bank
Book 18 · Jun 2018 ·
0.0star
A confession fifty years in the making puts everyone’s favorite Paris détéctive très chic, Aimée Leduc, on a collision course with the “Hand,” a cabal of corrupt Parisian cops among who masterminded her father's murder—and among whose ranks he might have once found membership. When a friend’s child is kidnapped while wearing her daughter’s hoodie, Aimée realizes that the case has crossed into the realm of the personal in more ways than one.
A dying man drags his oxygen machine into the office of Éric Besson, a lawyer in Paris’s 13th arrondissement. The old man, an accountant, is carrying a dilapidated notebook full of meticulous investment records. For decades, he has been helping a cadre of dirty cops launder stolen money. The notebook contains his full confession—he’s waited 50 years to make it, and now it can’t wait another day. He is adamant that Besson get the notebook into the hands of La Proc, Paris’s chief prosecuting attorney, so the corruption can finally be brought to light. But en route to La Proc, Besson’s courier—his assistant and nephew—is murdered, and the notebook disappears.
Grief-stricken Éric Besson tries to hire private investigator Aimée Leduc to find the notebook, but she is reluctant to get involved. Her father was a cop and was murdered by the same dirty syndicate the notebook implicates. She’s not sure which she’s more afraid of, the dangerous men who would kill for the notebook or the idea that her father’s name might be among the dirty cops listed within it. Ultimately that’s the reason she must take the case, which leads her across the Left Bank, from the Cambodian enclave of Khmer Rouge refugees to the ancient royal tapestry factories to the modern art galleries.
A dying man drags his oxygen machine into the office of Éric Besson, a lawyer in Paris’s 13th arrondissement. The old man, an accountant, is carrying a dilapidated notebook full of meticulous investment records. For decades, he has been helping a cadre of dirty cops launder stolen money. The notebook contains his full confession—he’s waited 50 years to make it, and now it can’t wait another day. He is adamant that Besson get the notebook into the hands of La Proc, Paris’s chief prosecuting attorney, so the corruption can finally be brought to light. But en route to La Proc, Besson’s courier—his assistant and nephew—is murdered, and the notebook disappears.
Grief-stricken Éric Besson tries to hire private investigator Aimée Leduc to find the notebook, but she is reluctant to get involved. Her father was a cop and was murdered by the same dirty syndicate the notebook implicates. She’s not sure which she’s more afraid of, the dangerous men who would kill for the notebook or the idea that her father’s name might be among the dirty cops listed within it. Ultimately that’s the reason she must take the case, which leads her across the Left Bank, from the Cambodian enclave of Khmer Rouge refugees to the ancient royal tapestry factories to the modern art galleries.
Murder in Bel-Air
Book 19 · Jun 2019 ·
0.0star
Cara Black’s riveting 19th installment in her New York Times bestselling Parisian detective series entangles private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft, post-colonial Franco-African politics, and neighborhood secrets in Paris’s 12th arrondissement.
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is about to go onstage to deliver the keynote address at a tech conference that is sure to secure Leduc Detective some much-needed business contracts when she gets an emergency phone call from her daughter’s playgroup: Aimée’s own mother, who was supposed to pick Chloe up, never showed. Abandoning her hard-won speaking gig, Aimée rushes to get Chloe, annoyed that her mother has let her down yet again.
But as Aimée and Chloe are leaving the playground, Aimée witnesses the body of a homeless woman being wheeled away from the neighboring convent, where nuns run a soup kitchen. The last person anyone saw the dead woman talking to was Aimée’s mother, who has vanished. Trying to figure out what happened to Sydney Leduc, Aimée tracks down the dead woman’s possessions, which include a huge amount of cash. What did Sydney stumble into? Is she in trouble?
Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc is about to go onstage to deliver the keynote address at a tech conference that is sure to secure Leduc Detective some much-needed business contracts when she gets an emergency phone call from her daughter’s playgroup: Aimée’s own mother, who was supposed to pick Chloe up, never showed. Abandoning her hard-won speaking gig, Aimée rushes to get Chloe, annoyed that her mother has let her down yet again.
But as Aimée and Chloe are leaving the playground, Aimée witnesses the body of a homeless woman being wheeled away from the neighboring convent, where nuns run a soup kitchen. The last person anyone saw the dead woman talking to was Aimée’s mother, who has vanished. Trying to figure out what happened to Sydney Leduc, Aimée tracks down the dead woman’s possessions, which include a huge amount of cash. What did Sydney stumble into? Is she in trouble?
Murder at the Porte de Versailles
Book 20 · Mar 2022 ·
3.5star
This riveting 20th installment entangles Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc in a dangerous web of international spycraft and terrorist threats in Paris's 15th arrondissement.
November 2001: in the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of fear. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory—and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosives under his fingernails.
Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. In an effort to prove this, she battles the police and his own lab colleagues, collecting conflicting eyewitness reports. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aimée uncovers ties to a cold case of her father’s.
As Aimée scours the streets of the 15th arrondissement trying to learn the truth, she has to ask herself if she should succumb to pressure from Chloe’s biological father and move them out to his farm in Brittany. But could Aimée Leduc ever leave Paris?
November 2001: in the wake of 9/11, Paris is living in a state of fear. For Aimée Leduc, November is bittersweet: the anniversary of her father’s death and her daughter’s third birthday fall on the same day. A gathering for family and friends is disrupted when a bomb goes off at the police laboratory—and Boris Viard, the partner of Aimée’s friend Michou, is found unconscious at the scene of the crime with traces of explosives under his fingernails.
Aimée doesn’t believe Boris set the bomb. In an effort to prove this, she battles the police and his own lab colleagues, collecting conflicting eyewitness reports. When a member of the French secret service drafts Aimée to help investigate possible links to an Iranian Revolutionary guard and fugitive radicals who bombed Interpol in the 1980s, Aimée uncovers ties to a cold case of her father’s.
As Aimée scours the streets of the 15th arrondissement trying to learn the truth, she has to ask herself if she should succumb to pressure from Chloe’s biological father and move them out to his farm in Brittany. But could Aimée Leduc ever leave Paris?
