Paris City of Night
Sex and the CIA. Okay, this book s hero, Jay Grant, whose father was a CIA man, has got two women in his life although only one of them really has his best interests at heart. It takes Jay quite a while to figure that out, however, as he is pursued from one end of Paris to another trying to figure out why both the CIA and a bunch of bad guys are after some daguerreotypes--could it be they contain the codes needed to blow up the city? Or to stop the city from being blown up? Only a longtime Paris resident writer like David Downie could weave City of Light street scenes so integrally into a fast-paced thriller like this and not lose the plot thread. And talk about your celebrity cameos! Adolph Eichmann, Jim Morrison--never mind that they are dead, they both play key roles. Downie brings both Paris and his characters alive with an economical but richly descriptive prose style reminiscent of Raymond Chandler and Eric Ambler. A must read! --Michael Balter, Balter's BlogPhotographer Jay Grant used his darkroom skills just for fun, producing some believable fake daguerreotypes but when one shows up at a Paris auction, threatening to connect him as a forger and a fraud, Grant dives in to recover the remaining fakes and keep his hands clean. Unfortunately, he didn t know how deep the water was: as the son of a spy, memories from his childhood and another set of daguerrotypes believed to contain important secret messages encoded in a way only Jay can decipher make him a target for the CIA, French intelligence, and possibly other spies and spooks with uncertain allegiances. David Downie s new novel Paris City of Night is Jay s story, stringing together terrorism, auction house fraud, murder, photography, and Nazis into a captivating mystery. [...] Downie s attention to detail and the smooth inclusion of the factual and the fanciful help give the book the believable weight which makes it a much stronger book than you might expect... --Derek Dahlsad, Collectors Quest