Cara Black

Cara Black is the New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of 21 books in the Private Investigator Aimée Leduc series, and two World War II-set novels featuring American markswoman Kate Rees. Black has received multiple nominations for the Anthony and Macavity Awards, a Washington Post Book World Book of the Year citation, the Médaille de la Ville de Paris—the Paris City Medal, which is awarded in recognition of contribution to international culture—and invitations to be the Guest of Honor at conferences such as the Paris Polar Crime Festival and Left Coast Crime.

Black's new novel is Murder at la Villette, the 21st installment of her mystery series featuring Parisian private investigator Aimée Leduc.

Recently I asked the author about what she reading. Black's reply:

I've been reading The Propagandist by Cécile Desprairies in the English translation.

To me, historical fiction matters and it's a way of how to breathe life into forgotten moments, lost voices little told women's stories and the timeless human experience.

Published in French as La Propagandiste, written by Desprairies a historian, this is her first novel.

I've read several of her historical books and this story, her first fiction, pulled me in from page one.

It's the story of Lucie, the narrator's mother. who we meet in Paris during the Trente Glorieuses, the Thirty glorious years of de Gaulle after WW2. Lucie's daughter, as a child, attends the meetings of the women of the family organized at their apartment. They gossip. Underneath the conversations, one thing leads to another, piercing the lies and unsaid things of this enigmatic mother.

The masks fall, and the story of this woman, a zealous collaborator, in France, under the Occupation, is revealed in full, in the image of a collective past of which we have, even today, not finished to take inventory. La Propagandiste takes an uncompromising look at the France of collaboration and its imprint on our collective memory.

Visit Cara Black's website and follow her on Twitter.

The Page 69 Test: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

My Book, the Movie: Murder at the Lanterne Rouge.

The Page 69 Test: Murder below Montparnasse.

The Page 69 Test: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder in Pigalle.

My Book, The Movie: Murder on the Champ de Mars.

The Page 69 Test: Three Hours in Paris.

The Page 69 Test: Night Flight to Paris.

Writers Read: Cara Black (March 2023).

--Marshal Zeringue