The Bones of Paris

Edgar-winner King delivers a sequel to 2008’s Touchstone with this impressive mystery set in 1929 Paris. In the arresting preface, set in Cornwall, Bennett Grey receives a letter from Harris Stuyvesant, his friend but “a man whose motives Grey had reason to distrust,” containing four photographs whose contents are so disturbing that the suicidal Grey burns them immediately. The action then shifts to Paris 10 days earlier, where Stuyvesant, a former FBI man who left on bad terms with Hoover, is trying to trace a missing 22-year-old American woman, Pip Crosby. To the investigator, Crosby is just “one in a string of mostly blonde, mostly young women” who shared his bed, adding a patina of guilt to his inquiries. The trail leads him to a tantalizing mystery involving the Théâtre du Grand-Guignol and artists who use human bones to create their work.Readers will hope to see more of Grey, who is absent for most of this story, and Stuyvesant in future books. Agent: Linda Allen, Linda Allen Literary Agency. (Sept.)