Cara Black’s twelfth Aimée Leduc mystery, Murder at the Lanterne Rouge, is out this week! Templars, secret medieval guilds, Chinatown sweatshops, botched affairs of the heart… The book was given the coveted Publisher’s Weekly star (“Outstanding!”), and is an IndieNext Pick. I know you’ll enjoy Cara’s story about how a book and a lie led to a series if you haven’t read it here before, or even if you have. Enjoy! – Meg
When I began writing I never thought I’d finish a book much less set it in Paris or write a series. I wasn’t a doctor, a policewoman, a sketch artist or with the FBI. I was a mom, a preschool teacher and had old friends in Paris. The total sum of my qualifications apart from reading and loving mysteries.
I did grow up in a Francophile family in the SF Bay Area and attended a French Catholic school. My father was a Francophile and loved good food and wine. In the 50’s my uncle went to France and studied with artist George Braques, so talk at our dinner table was a lot about France. I lived in Europe when I was college age.
It was the story of my friend’s mother, a hidden Jewish girl in Paris during the German Occupation, that drove me to write. I’d heard this story when I visited the Marais with my friend and just felt somehow, someway I had to write this. As I mentioned here on Meg’s blog previously, this led to three and a half years of writing in what became Murder in the Marais.
During the process I’d discovered I couldn’t write as a French woman, I can’t even tie my scarf the right way. But I began spending more time in Paris in the mid-1990’s to develop Aimée Leduc, my PI turned computer security sleuth. I interviewed three female detectives in Paris who ran their own detective agency and took qualities from each. It became important to me that my character Aimée be half-American, half-French be a young, contemporary woman like the Parisian women I know, have a strong fashion sense and be fierce in her pursuit of justice. The justice that eludes people sometimes in daily life. And that she know much more about computers than I do.
But when my editor accepted the first manuscript (Marais) she asked… “Where’s Aimée going next?”
I hesitated. “What do you mean?”
“Well, where’s she going to discover crime next. Which part of Paris?” Long pause. “You are writing the next aren’t you…a series?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“You’ve started I assume?”
“Matter of fact, the story takes up right after the Marais.” I said the first thing that came into my head while running to my computer.
“Good a continuation, her next case, the next part of her life…that man she met..what about him?”
My editor was feeding me ideas and I wasn’t going to ignore them. “Yves the journalist, yes, the relationship will go somewhere and she’s going to Belleville.”
My bright idea since I’d just stayed in that district with my friend, a single Mom who’s daughter was the same age as my son. I slept on her couch, took her daughter to school, paid her gas bills and saw another side of Paris in doing so.
“Belleville…where’s that?”
Ok this was before the movie Triplets of Belleville.
“But that’s where Edith Piaf lived, she sang on the streets.”
“Fine,” my editor said.
And there I was powering up my computer, searching for my notes, napkins from the Belleville bistro, my photos and I had a goal. Aimée was going to Belleville, murder somehow would be involved, a problematic relationship with Yves would ensue and I was off.
And that’s how it’s been with each other book. Aimée’s got office rent to pay, a business to run, upkeep on a crumbling 17th century townhouse flat with archaic plumbing, a bichon frise to walk on Seine quai and a penchant for bad boys. In part Aimée’s journey, progression in her life, and investigations mirror what I discover in Paris. But to get the details, the stories, the insight from the ‘experts’ I needed and still need help.
Friends have friends, and their introductions in Paris open doors. In my case doors to private detectives, police, and local cafe owners. Over the years I’ve built up these connections, nourished them with bottles of wine over dinner and running possible scenarios by these experts, some of whom have become friends.
“I want you to get it right,” a retired Commissaire once told me, “if you’re writing a book set in Paris, a real city, you need to get the police system and all the details correct.” I appreciate that and the time he takes meeting with me and talking. He was in charge of the Princess Diana investigation and has provided a wealth of details.
Ok so many crime writers kill people on the page for a living but in my case it pays for my habit. Going to Paris and doing research. There’s so much I don’t know, I tell my husband, so I have to visit the archives, libraries, interview computer hackers etc. he just nods. “I know.” In Paris on the cobblestones, in the metro I get a spark of a story, a detail, overhear a conversation I’d never hear otherwise. My novels aren’t set in the beret and baguette Paris, or the tourist areas, but off the beaten track, the backstreets and courtyards of quartiers not often seen. More like a sociological slice of life in the darker side of the city of light. The areas Aimée explores from the sewers to the Morgue to her decaying elegant 17th century apartment on the Ile Saint Louis. It’s a trip to Paris without the airfare to an area you probably haven’t seen before.
Over the course of the books Aimée’s developed, I’ve gotten to know her more. It’s been an organic process certainly not one I expected. So in beginning a book, I think back to my editor’s words, start with a particular part of Paris that intrigues me, of a story that could only happen there and feel driven to tell it. This district of Paris is a character. The murder, while important and propels the plot, isn’t the focus, it’s how the murder impacts Aimée and why she would investigate, the family and friends surrounding the victim, the community and this little part of Paris. A way to explore moral ambiguities and the grey areas when murder isn’t black and white. – Cara
