Exciting, compellling mystery with lots of political overtones. Excellent read.

La tensión crece en el barrio obrero de Belleville cuando se intensifica una huelga de hambre en protesta contra las estrictas leyes de inmigración. Aimée Leduc se salva por los pelos de morir en un atentado con coche bomba mientras persigue a terroristas entre nacionalistas argelinos y fundamentalistas islámicos que conforman una red clandestina norteafricana en París.

Cara Black’s second Aimée Leduc novel continues from the first, leading fashionably chic protagonist Aimée into the dark streets of downtrodden Belleville, aiming to meet with her good friend, wife of a French Minister. Hauntingly evocative of time, place and politics, the story combines European terrorism, colonial misdemeanors, and financial and political greed into a tale of danger, mystery and suspense. The novel starts and ends with fast dramatic action, but slows for introspection, investigation and intrigue in the middle—with touches of sheer terror interspersed. The storyline is scarily relevant to the present day, proving there’s nothing new under the French or American suns. And Aimée continues to be a complex protagonist, resourceful, foolish, passionate and loyal to the end. Together with great side characters—especially Renée—she helps the helpless, loves loyally, and longs to learn what happened to her father. A slow, complex and rewarding read.

Disclosure: I got several of these on a deal and look forward to reading more. ( )

This is the second in a series about Aimee Leduc, a young French woman who works as a private investigator and computer security specialist in Paris. I read the first one and felt disappointed but decided to persist. The human characters, including the heroine, remain shallow, but as you have probably guessed, the city is the subject. Black brings to the city to life, not by having Aimee interact with tourist attractions, but instead having her conduct interviews with eccentrics in crummy apartments and running for her life through alleys and courtyards and trying to get to the subway without being seen.
Black titles her mysteries after a different section of Paris. Belleville, based on her description, is a former working-class district now overrun by immigrants from France’s former colonies in North and West Africa. The immigrants, as victims and criminals and political hot potatoes, are integral to a plot that is convincing, interesting, and exciting in places. Worst fault: having the book end with a physical confrontation between Aimee and a strong assassin, the heroine winning by a fluke. I would have preferred a low key ending with her winning by her considerable wiles. I found this an improvement on the first and will continue reading the series. ( )

This is the second entry in the Aimee LeDuc mystery series from Cara Black, and it is another average mystery. I confess that I am having trouble figuring out why this series is so popular. They are advertised as thrillers, but I think they are borderline cozy mysteries. Very straightforward with predictable plots and characters.

In this novel there were a couple of featured characters that seemed to have no place in the novel. Not even at the end, so they seemed like expendable Redshirts in Star Trek. However, rather than just disappearing when their part of the story was over, they kept hanging around cluttering the plot and doing nothing to move the story along. I noticed this tendency in Ms. Black's first novel, but thought it an anomaly. With the continuation of this trend in the second novel, it is apparent that it is a particular writing style of this author. In addition to this hanging character beef, the main character, Aimee LeDuc also displays some annoying character quirks don't seem to add up or enhance the story line. If an author is building a series, it is OK to have some of that present in novels in order to bring them into the story lines of subsequent novels. However, a few of these need to be wrapped up or explained, and the plots need to move on, instead of this continuous thread that goes nowhere with no satisfactory explanation. This is a very workmanlike mystery series, and one that I might return to in the future, but I will be in no great hurry to do so. ( )