Aimée Leduc's Paris, spycraft in Bel-Air

HALLIE EPHRON: A new Aimée Leduc mystery is the next best thing to a trip to Paris. I love the series, and today I'm thrilled to be hosting its delightful author Cara Black.

Cara, you’ve taken your readers on 19 adventures, each to a different part of Paris. I remember being blown away by your first, Murder in the Marais, cheering books later when Aimée found herself pregnant and tracking a serial rapist in Pigalle. Loved her computer savvy and fearlessness, her fashion sense and Kohl eyes, and the way you interweave history into every story.

I know you’re touring now with Aimée’s new adventure in Bel-Air. Not a tourist destination, or is it?

CARA BLACK: That’s right, Hallie, Bel-Air, in the 12th arrondissment is off the beaten track in Paris.

I’ve visited Paris often over the years and been so lucky to stay there due to the generosity and tolerance of my Parisian friends who’ve offered a couch, or a bedroom and sometimes an apartment in exchange for cat-sitting. One of these friends is Madame Gerbault, the mother of my French neighbor in San Francisco, who lives in Bel-Air and that her quiet, seemingly peaceful quartier had been the royal hunting grounds of the kings and site of the worst excesses of the Revolution ie the guillotine at Place de la Nation where 1,306 victims had been executed and their bodies dumped in a mass grave...literally, next door to her apartment.

I discovered that like everywhere in Paris, history is only below the surface. And that Madame Gerbault’s quartier was ripe for my story.

HALLIE: You took a huge leap when you got Aimée pregnant and now she’s a single mother. But you’ve followed Raymond Chandler’s advice: “A really good detective never gets married.” But how complicated life is now for her with Chloé to worry about. And yet… that very thing becomes integral to the plot of your new book. Tell us about it.

CARA: Aimée is a single mother juggling her business - at the detective agency where she must earn the baguette and butter it too along with her responsibilites as a mother and her bébe Chloé her priority. Add to that Chloé’s biological father, Melac, a problematic relationship and her American mother Sydney, who’s popped back into her life (she’d abandoned Aimée when Aimée was eight years old) who never makes it easy. Aimée feels a push and pull with Melac since he’s Chloé’s father but knows him not to be ‘marriage’ material or is he...?

HALLIE: Ooh, I like that romantic tension!

In this book you take a deep dive into international spycraft and post-colonial Franco-African politics. Tell us about how you researched that.CARA: My friend Laurence, a French journalist, went to live in the Cote d’Ivoire - Ivory Coast - a former French colony in Africa that had been the shining jewel in the necklace of France-Afrique as they called it. Cote d’Ivoire had a stable government and political scene, the French language, profitable chocolate trade, an easy access for the French on an exotic holiday but according to Laurence all was not rosy. This intrigued me and in 1999 when my story is set, a coup d’etat was in the works and the Cote d’Ivorian government overturned in a coup d’etat on Christmas day in 1999.

I researched with the help of Laurence, who sadly, died there in a plane crash last year. I also met French aid workers from UNICEF who’d been stationed in French Africa in the 90’s and a French military advisor (African division) to the UN who provided invaluable info and historical data. Of course, I’ve fictionalized certain elements and veiled some characters, but basically a lot of these events happened.

HALLIE: How does this book take Aimée into uncharted territory, and where are you thinking she might go next?CARA: The world of espionage fascinates me - especially the female component and how talented women can be as spies. Blend-in, stand out and all shades in between doing undercover, right? From Mata Hari in WWI, to the many unsung SOE female operatives in WW2 occupied Europe, to the Cold War and present day. Aimée’s mother we learn, SPOILER, worked with the CIA and is a freelancer now, who embroils her daughter in her work involving the Cote d’Ivoire.

I think Aimée is wired - despite her fighting it - to be a great spy...that’s if she took the offer she gets. It was fun to play with this possibility, dangle it in front of her and I’m leaving that open ended...

HALLIE: ... and leaving US dangling!

If readers want to catch up with you on tour, where should they head?

CARA: As you read this I’ll be mid-tour and at the wonderful Poisoned Pen in Scottsdale AZ this evening. Then on to bookstores in the LA area; Mystery Ink, Chevalier’s Books, Vroman’s, Mysterious Galaxy then back east to NY, NC, and Houston and in July in DC with pal Sujata Massey. It’s all on www.carablack.com at events and hope some of your readers can come by to help me celebrate 20 years of Aimée Leduc. I never knew when I began writing that I’d have a more than a twenty year intimate relationship with my fictional detective!

HALLIE: Readers and Reds, have you been to Paris or only experienced it through pictures? See anything that would inspire YOU to write a nice juicy crime novel?