Allen & Unwin, Australia 2026
Cover design Deborah Parry Graphics
Cover images Elisabeth Ansley/Trevillion Images; Allusioni/iStock; Ekaproeka/Creative Market
With a decided nod to Golden Age detective fiction, Kirsty Manning gives us a female journalist amateur sleuth who works in concert with the metropolitan police in Paris and provincial police as the case widens.
The investigative milieu for our career woman Australian (yes) in Paris is wealthy – the Ritz, American oil barons, socialite soirées, country villas.
Principal heroine Charlie James (Charlotte) is aided and abetted by her work pal Violet, who not only keeps the newspaper office running smoothly, but is a financial whizz and the lover of an up and coming fashion designer Aleksandr.
The woman share a strong desire to make it in their own fields, Charlie licking her wounds from a failed marriage and Violet trying to avoid the fate of being married off to a ‘suitable man’’ back home in England.
The disappearance of oil heiress Maisy Bell is the catalyst for Charlie’s adventures in this novel. She is enraged that police, press and public opinion are tending to blame the young American woman rather than conducting a sound investigation into her disappearance. She is characterised as flighty and spoilt and no doubt off on a romantic escapade.
Charlie doesn’t think so and becomes increasingly concerned about the young woman’s welfare and moved by the distress of her Texan relatives – Aunt Clementine who was the official chaperone and her twin brother Mason, who joins her while the search flounders and officialdom file it away.
Charlie’s editor George treads a fine line between protecting Charlie (fresh from a hospital stay after her last big case) and keeping her on the journalistic straight and narrow. He sends her to cover a series of apparently unrelated murders in the provinces and forbids her to carry on her search for Maisy Bell. Charlie sees links and her instinct leads her to make connections between the murders and the disappearance.
Meanwhile she is determined to keep her professional standards foremost as she works with the sympathetic but time-stretched Inspector Bernard and the madly attractive provincial detective Allard.
The issues explored in this novel are contemporary despite its pre-WW 11 Parisian setting: the rights of women in a largely patriarchal workforce and society; misogyny; violence against women and the powerless; the differences of opportunity and lifestyle wrought by class and wealth; the role of police and press and their relationship; the importance of compassion in professions involving dark matter and the effect on those who work in them.
With champagne, luxurious fabrics, expensive jewellery and the heady atmosphere of well to do Paris society between the two world wars as backdrop, the author weaves a tale of cruelty and disregard for human life.
But there is always the fulfillment of dreams waiting quietly in the wings – notably, for Charlie and for Violet, women who must constantly fight for their place in the worlds they have chosen to inhabit.
The persistent sense of sadness that pervades this story is sprinkled with points of light by the glamour of Paris, but the real light comes from the heroism of those who seek justice for the wronged at considerable cost to their own wellbeing and safety.
As with most crime fiction, and certainly the Golden Age variety, it is this quest for justice for the voiceless that drives the action and so endears those who work tirelessly for it to us. We eagerly await Charlie’s next adventure.
Thank you to Allen & Unwin for my review copy and to Kirsty speaking with me about Golden Age crime fiction, the guiding principles of the protagonists in this story and the timeless lure of Paris.