{"id":287,"date":"2016-09-08T20:41:42","date_gmt":"2016-09-09T01:41:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/?p=287"},"modified":"2016-09-08T20:41:42","modified_gmt":"2016-09-09T01:41:42","slug":"death-in-the-library","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/death-in-the-library\/","title":{"rendered":"Death in the Library"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"the-paris-librarian\"<\/a>The Paris Librarian<\/em><\/a>
\nMark Pryor<\/a>
\nSeventh Street Books<\/a>
\nTrade Paper $15.95
\nEbook $9.99<\/p>\n

I’d like to thank Seventh Street Books for sending me a copy of The Paris Librarian. It’s been out for about a month now. I finished the book about the time it was released, and things have just slowed down enough to write the review. The reviews you’ve seen in the past month were for things I’d finished before this one. Hopefully things will settle down for a bit, and I can be more productive.<\/p>\n

This is the sixth installment in the Hugo Marston series.\u00a0 I’ve not read any of the previous books.\u00a0 Seventh Street has sent me review copies, but I’d not been able to work any of them in until now.\u00a0 I’m going to go back and read some of them.<\/p>\n

For the most part, the story was a stand-alone, but there were enough references to events in Hugo’s recent past that from time to time I wished I had read them so I could follow the details of the conversation a bit better.<\/p>\n

Hugo Marsten is a former FBI agent who now works as an investigator at the US Embassy in Paris.\u00a0 There’s an American library there, and Hugo is a friend of one of the librarians.\u00a0 When the man is found dead in a locked room, the initial conclusion is that he died of natural causes.\u00a0 The librarian was an American citizen.\u00a0 As the librarian’s friend, and as a member of the embassy staff, Hugo helps with what he at first believes is a routine matter.<\/p>\n

But he finds a few details puzzling.\u00a0 As he digs deeper, more and more things don’t add up.\u00a0 Then another person nearly dies, again from what appears to be a natural situation.\u00a0 Soon Hugo is neck deep in more than he realizes, including a crime that is decades old.<\/p>\n

The Paris Librarian<\/em> isn’t the type of crime novel I typically read, but the mystery was well put together.\u00a0 Not noir enough for my taste.\u00a0 But it’s still a solid locked room mystery that turns out to be more than just a puzzle story.\u00a0 Hugo isn’t as colorful as some detectives, but he’s more grounded that your typical gumshoe.\u00a0 That makes for a likable protagonist and an enjoyable mystery.\u00a0\u00a0 So even though there was less action than there usually is in the books I feature here, this is still a series I will return to in the future.<\/p>\n

The only thing that threw me out of the story was my familiarity with Paris. Or rather my lack of familiarity with the city.\u00a0 I’ve never been to France, so I wasn’t familiar with the streets or many of the locations Pryor mentioned.\u00a0 I know he tries to keep the geography as consistent as he can with the real city.\u00a0 The references weren’t heavy-handed.\u00a0 He wasn’t trying to flaunt his knowledge or show off.\u00a0 I felt the level of geographic detail was about right, especially for people who were familiar with the city.\u00a0 The problem was with me, namely that I didn’t want to stop reading to look anything up.<\/p>\n

If you like a good mystery, especially of the locked-room variety, then you’ll want to check out this series if you haven’t already.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The Paris Librarian Mark Pryor Seventh Street Books Trade Paper $15.95 Ebook $9.99 I’d like to thank Seventh Street Books for sending me a copy of The Paris Librarian. It’s been out for about a month now. I finished the book about the time it was released, and things have just slowed down enough to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[4],"tags":[102,101,84],"class_list":["post-287","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-seventh-street-books","tag-hugo-marsten","tag-mark-pryor","tag-seventh-street-books"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p3P58L-4D","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=287"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":290,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/287\/revisions\/290"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=287"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=287"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/adventuresfantastic.com\/gumshoes\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=287"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}