BOOKS - Fiction
The past and the present collide in modern Paris where a murder committed in 1945 challenges a daughter and the mother she thought she knew.
A MURDER IN PARIS
by Matthew Blake
Published by Harper (September 30, 2025)
Paperback $18.99
Audiobook $14.99
Reviewed by Penny A Parrish
Watching our parents or grandparents age can be difficult as they face physical and sometimes mental challenges. For Olivia Finn, her regular life is turned upside down when police in Paris call her home in London. Their message: her grandmother has just admitted to murder.
Olivia takes a leave from her job as a therapist who specializes in helping people recover deeply hidden memories, and heads to the famous Hotel Lutetia, where she finds the grandmother she knows as Josephine Benoit. But the police say she is Sophie Leclerc and that she killed Josephine in Room 11 in 1945. The elderly woman is obviously addled, but she swears the incident took place.
In chapters that go back and forth between 1945 and today, Olivia tries to find the truth. The post WWII chapters focus on refugees from death camps who were housed at the Lutetia after being rescued. Both Josephine and Sophie were among those who survived. At one time they were childhood friends. Now, both little more than skeletons with shaved heads, they share Room 11 as they wait for documents that will allow them to start life anew in Paris. But the process is complicated by the fact that police are looking for collaborators. Too many Parisians turned on their friends and neighbors and reported them to the Nazis. If that is true of Josephine or Sophie, they will not be allowed to leave.
The modern-day chapters are Olivia’s attempt to find answers. Several people including a police inspector and Olivia’s mentor who were around in 1945 also want to know the truth. But uncovering repressed memories does not always bring comforting answers, as everyone finds out.
The Lutetia Hotel was actually the major processing point for returning French survivors from April through August of 1945. Blake has written an intriguing psychological story, and the focus on collaborators in Paris is not often touched upon in fiction. The role they too often played is detailed here, along with thoughts on why “good people” sometimes sell their souls to save themselves.
Penny A Parrish is a local writer and photographer. See her pictures here.
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