Cara Black: Murder in Saint-Germain

Cara Black is the author of 17 novels in her series of detective novels featuring Aimée Leduc, the fashionably attired, unfailingly intrepid Parisian private investigator. 

Jenn: I was lucky enough to meet Cara at ALA last year in Orlando and I am happy to report that she is as fabulous in person as she is in print. Being a lover of all things Paris, I am just thrilled that her latest Aimée Leduc novel is available this week!

In the latest book  Murder in Saint Germain, Aimée finds herself involved on the Left Bank.  Black's stories treat those who love Paris to vividly rendered scenes in favorite Parisian locations. This time some of them include the Ecole des Beaux Arts, the Jardin de Luxembourg, back offices of the Sénat, the church of St Germain des Pres, and the Closerie des Lilas, famous as one of Hemingway's favorite cafés. Complicating matters for Aimée is the fact that she is now the single mother of an 8-month old baby. 

What's the most interesting or surprising thing you learned about the 6th arrondissement--or maybe about Paris--in writing Murder in Saint Germain?

-Good question, Jenn, and hi Reds, thanks for having me back! 

I was lucky enough to be invited, after a lot of begging, to tour the Saint Germain area with Patrick, a commander in the Brigade Criminelle (elite Paris homicide squad). The Saint-Germain quarter was Patrick’s first ‘beat’ as a new flic after graduating from the police academy. It was fascinating to walk with Patrick on his old haunts in the quarter. He told me about his first cases, the investigations and we actually visited where they happened. It opened my eyes. ‘Here’ he said, ‘we found an old woman who’d been murdered and solved it by uncovering a robbery that had gone wrong’. He pointed to the rooftops and explained how a lot of burglaries happened via the skylights. He talked about policing at that time, in the 90’s, and how, as an effective flic, you needed to know your community and nourish your contacts. He used to see Marcel Carné, the famous film director of les Enfants du Paradis, who lived next door to the Commissariat. Monsieur Carné would always say bonjour to him!     

You've been in some very interesting situations in the course of researching your stories, and I must say I think you are almost as intrepid in pursuing your stories as Aimée is in pursuing villains. What's the funniest, or most unusual, situation you found yourself in the course of researching this book? 

-Stooping and crab walking in the old tunnels under the 

Jardin du Luxembourg! Seriously these tunnels traverse juste à cote to Boulevard Saint Michel and are deep underground. The underground tunnels are full of history and stories from rumored royal escapes to WW2 exploits. They also house air raid shelters used by the German Luftwaffe who were stationed in the Lycée Montaigne during the Occupation. There are still signs in German and rusted memorabilia. Oddly, the temperature is moderate and maybe it’s because the walls are limestone. It’s another world down there, quiet and full of the past.

Plot is of course of utmost importance in a crime novel. Do you plot your stories through to the end before you start writing, or does the plot develop organically along the way, as you are writing the story?

 -More organically. I knew Aimée was a single mom with an eight month old, she had unresolved guilt issues about her god father Morbier and she’d be doing computer security at Ecole des Beaux Arts. In crime fiction, policier, it’s about putting your protagonist out on a limb, chopping it down and they have to climb higher and higher and the branches get thinner and thinner. Putting your protagonist in conflict reveals their character. I’ve lived with Aimée for a long time and try to deepen her character and the problems she faces which I hope reflect what a contemporary Parisian faces. I met a female police officer, also part of an elite squad for lunch, I was dying to hear about her job, what it was like to work in a male dominated place. But she kept bringing the conversation back to her secondment to the Hague working on the Balkans with an international team for the International Court for crimes in the Former Yugoslavia. Her tales were harrowing and she suffered what we’d call PTSD. Only then did I realize that was part of the story I wanted to tell. Had to tell.

One of the things about your writing is a kind of cinematic quality to your descriptions of Paris as Aimée moves around it. You render not only the complicated action at the center of your plot, but also the background details. How do you do this? Do you take notes of actual scenes you observe while you're in Paris, or are you able to create these little vignettes out of your memory, or your imagination?

-In Paris, I take photos, record street sounds and in the cafes. I take a lot of notes and eavesdrop conversations on the # 96 Paris bus which goes from Belleville through the city to Montparnasse. It’s my favorite bus line because you traverse the city, right to left bank, and the passengers reflect it. Being a mapaholic and walking the streets at different times of the day inform a scene - it’s always important to visit a place at different times of the day to see how the light falls, the sounds, the morning bustle at the cafe, people returning from work stopping for an aperitif and paint the quarter as it lives and breathes.

Thanks so much for visiting us, Cara! Congrats on the release of Murder in Saint-Germain. So, Reds, are you like Cara and let your plot develop organically or do you plot your story all the way through to the end?