Laurie King's Mary Russell series is one of those stories that you keep going back to because its so well done and the characters become such a part of your life. Not realizing that Bones of Paris was part of another series, let alone not part of Mary Russell's series, I grabbed it from the library excited to have the latest book in my possession. I was not disappointed that this story was not part of the Mary Russell series because the character of Bennett Grey grabs you right off the bat. Why is this man so tortured, what is in the envelope that arrives so suddenly, and who is Sarah?
My only regret with this story was that I didn't realize that it was part of another series until I was a good way into it. The first book is called Touchstone and is now on my list of things to read, but I don't feel like I missed too much with this story by not having read the first. King is excellent at succinctly packaging up the plots of her previous novels so that readers can pick books up out of order. This story focuses mainly on Harris Stuyvesant, a American exFBI agent who has been hired to find the whereabouts of a missing American girl in Paris in 1929. This novel definitely pays homage to the hard boiled crime writers of the 20s, even mentioning Dashiell Hammett's Red Harvest, as a gift to the main character. The pace was very nervy, it took me a while to get invested in the characters, mainly because Harris was wandering all over Paris showing people a girl's photograph and not getting any leads. King drags you along with Harris as he hits every dead end possible. Its a very frustrating feeling as a reader because it doesn't seem like the story is going anywhere and it turns back on itself quite often. The moment of excitement doesn't occur until about 1/3 of the way through the book and then you're hooked. It is a perfect reflection of the moment when Harris finds his first connection. King is masterful at pulling the reader into the lives of her characters. The only thing that I found difficult to swallow was how Harris talks to women. Its all "oh Honey, I'm just thinking of your purty blue eyes..." and it really rubbed me the wrong was as false, and not at all like the voice she narrates his thoughts in. But the more I thought about it, Harris usually spoke like that when he needed to cover up his own thoughts, so maybe it was meant to sound false, a poor mask pulled up over the detective inside.
If you are a fan of Mary Russell as I am then I have one warning to give: This book is much darker than the Russell books. In those, generally the good are found alive, the bad meet their just rewards, and the chase is refreshing and exciting. They follow a pattern set by the original Sherlock Holmes stories. The Bones of Paris does not. The story is closely tied with the ideas of French Surrealism in the 1920s, an art form that I find very disturbing. The story is disquieting, the violence so easily described is unsettling. Death permeates this story. The human body is seen as a canvas, life is so easily extinguished in the name of art and the disturbing, even grotesque, is put on stage simply to get it out of the mind. Paris at this time is a city that has been severely broken by the first World War and the people that inhabit it are equally fractured and disturbed.
This is the type of story that stays with you even after you close the final pages. I had to flip to the end and read the last paragraph when I was 2/3 of the way in because I had to know if the people I cared about survived. The story had upset me so much that if they didn't I wasn't going to be able to continue the book. What I found there reassured me without ruining the story, and I continued reading. I would definitely recommend this book to anyone who likes mysteries because it is dark and twisted, which seems to be a theme currently, but without the gratuitous violence that often accompanies those stories. It is a very cerebral story and a nice homage to the vintage hard boiled detective. However, I personally would suggest reading Touchstone before The Bones of Paris just to make the characters fuller.
