Paris Noir Book

By the end of the book I felt familiar with the denizens of Paris and knowledgeable about the streets and neighborhoods of the city. The stories varied widely in theme and also in quality, but there were a number of really good ones.

The book starts out a little slow with the tale of a prostitute and the chauffeur who tries to save her (The Chauffeur) then we are treated to a harrowing and very disturbing story of a madwoman and her hostage (The Chinese Guy) After that we meet a scholarly Arab and his sidekick who deal with the temptation to commit violence in Big Brother, a violent and chaotic story about spies, and, one of my favorites, the story of a jaded private detective who encounters a doomed mafia victim on Christmas Eve (Christmas) and another favorite, the story of a coalition of waiters who go to great lengths to find a missing jogger (The Revenge of the Waiters) Another story is about an aspiring mystery writer who gets closer to a crime than he bargained for in La Vie En Rose, a story about the murder of a man who made his fortune selling information, and another one that stands out, Dead Memory, about a man who prowls the city streets caught in his own personal madness and constantly chasing sanity, haunted by a wartime tragedy.

Not all the stories in the book were above par, but the majority of them were entertaining. I liked how the stories were all originally in French and by French authors.