Aimee Leduc, my half-American, half-French computer security detective is stuck working in Paris in August, when most Parisians are away on vacation. She’s thrilled to sign a computer security contract with Michel, a trendy young media tycoon. Leaving Michel’s firm, in a converted warehouse in the 10th arrondissement (an up and coming district once the site of furriers, belle epoque theatres and small ateliers) she’s surprised to meet Yves Robert, her on again off again boyfriend, an investigative journalist who’s been stationed in Cairo. But Yves relates that he’s been in Turkey on assignment but has returned to Paris for good. Yves is buying a converted loft on the nearby Canal Saint Martin. Aimee spends the night with him, he proposes marriage but the next morning Yves body is found on the rue de Paradis. He’s wearing make-up and the police suspect a male prostitute found in the area. But Aimée believes Yves was set up and was working on a story. The story comes from a real series of bombings in Paris in August 1995 that rocked France. Terrorists had found ‘sanctuary’ if that’s the right word, previously in the unspoken agreement to remain neutral in France. But the rules had changed and the authorities didn’t know why. I explore the possibilities of what I think happened.

Thanks. I like to think that Paris is a character in my books. Sense of place, that unique part of Paris that speaks to me drives the story. Paris is really a collection of villages, twenty arrondissements or districts that each have a flavor. I try to think why crime would occur here in this quartier of Paris, what crime would happen here, who lives here, what is the distinct taste of this quartier of Paris and then the story comes.

I knew I couldn’t write as a French woman, I can’t even tie my scarf the right way but I grew up in a Francophile family; my father loved good food and wine, I attended a Catholic school with French nuns and I lived in Europe when I was younger. I interviewed three female detectives in Paris who ran their own detective agency and took qualities from each. It was important to me that Aimée be a young, contemporary woman like the Parisian women I know, have a strong fashion sense and be fierce in her pursuit of justice. The justice that eludes people sometimes in daily life. And that she know much more about computers than I do.

Funny, but I never planned to write a series. And now eight books later, I’d like to say I had a master plan but the series with Aimee Leduc has just evolved. In Murder in the Marais, my first book, I just wanted to tell the story of my friend’s mother, a young Jewish girl who hid in the Marais during the German Occupation of Paris in WWII. My friend’s mother was 14 years old and came home from school one day to find her family gone. She stayed in the apartment, went to school, hoping they would return. A year later, in 1944 at Liberation, she searched for them at the train stations, at the Hotel Lutetia on the Left Bank where the Red Cross had a terminus center for returning deportees and she found they’d gone to Auschwitz. My friend told me this story one day in the Marais and it touched me. Years later when I returned to Paris in the mid 1990’s the story came back to me and I wanted to explore these issues of the past, lingering anti-Semitism and how war still touched every generation.

Maybe mysteries help us deal with the frustration and unresolved situations we encounter in daily life. When I read a mystery I like to experience some sense that justice is served. Not that all the loose ends are tied up but that good in some form triumphs.

There’s a big expat English speaking community in France and my books are sold in English language bookstores. Murder in the Sentier, the 3rd book in the series, has just been translated into French and came out there about three weeks ago. I know it’s in bookstores, my Paris friends have told me they’ve seen it, but I have no clue as to the reception. And I’m dying to find out.

For me these stories can only happen in Paris. No where else. I’m exploring the darker side of the City of Light.

A famous British author, sorry I can’t remember his name, said the past is a foreign country. And it’s one that intrigues and makes me want to explore it. The past informs the present. Each generation is influenced by the previous and in France that means two world wars in the past century, and a monarchy until the 19th century. In my research on Turkey and the Kurdish issues, I found these divisive problems date back hundreds of years. What happened long ago still affects the Kurds and in a way, you could say that France too is still bound by ancient ties, the country wasn’t even united by a common language (French) until Napoleon or even with a central government. And that wasn’t so long ago.

My writing group meets twice a month and we critique each other’s work in progress. I’m an equal member and receive comments like everyone else. I’m always looking to make my story better. It’s important to listen to the comments, take what makes sense or would make the story clearer, deepen or enhance it. Or even delve more into the character, strengthen what would be more organic to the plot. If several people make the same comments, I listen.

Write what you are passionate about - that’s the best advice I ever received.