In the Shadows of Paris: A Victor Legris Mystery

An especially crafty solution distinguishes the fifth belle epoque whodunit from the two sisters using the Izner pseudonym (after 2011’s The Assassin in the Marais). After a daring daytime robbery of a jewelry store, carried out with the unwitting assistance of a gendarme, Paris is hit by a violent crime wave. Two murders—one of the founder of Paris’s natural history museum, the other of a painter of enamels—attract the attention of bookseller Victor Legris. His curiosity becomes more than casual after a bookbinder friend, Pierre Andresy, perishes in a fire in his store amid evidence that arson was involved. Bizarrely, a death notice in the paper for Andresy was placed before his death and contains language similar to that on a note found on the painter’s corpse. Not many readers will identify the murderer before Legris, whose quirky and endearing character is even more developed than in previous books. (Sept.)