by Sara Leipciger
I really enjoyed the lyrical language of this author.
It is an interesting story, trying to try three figures together through history.
The story starts off quite starkly "This is how I drowned". It starts with a young french girl who coes to Paris to be a ladies companion. The lady is quite fond of the young woman, unlike the aunt who had been raising her. The young woman falls in love with another young french woman and is totally smitten with her. She is devastated when her lover breaks off the relationship.
A young carpenter has seen the two women kiss and he tells the young girl he will expose her unless she has sex with him. She doesn't want to do it but she feels she must. The young man goes away to continue is apprenticeship but promises he will come back to marry her. She doesn't want to marry him as she dislikes what he made her do.
After he is gone the girl discovers she is pregnant. Her employer is very caring and supportive saying that they can leave Paris and move to a small town where they can pretend she is a widow. However, after the baby is born the young woman climbs into the Seine and drowns.
Her body is pulled out of the Seine and a young apprentice finds her face attractive and makes a death mask of it. It turns out that her face becomes popular and is reproduced over the years as art.
The second part of the story is about a Norwegian man who is talking to his son (who we later find out drowned while the family was on an outing). The man became adept at making dolls out of plastic and is eventually called to America to make the face for the official CPR dummy.
The third story is about a young woman, living in northern Canada and later near Ottawa, who has Cystic Fibrosis. Despite her health she loves to swim in cold lakes and rivers. The story includes her parents who eventually divorce.
The story ends with Camille, the daughter of the Parisian Girl, in a class to learn how to use CPR to potentially save the life of her husband who has heart problems.
I can see how Camille, Camille's mother and the Norwegian were connected but the girl with CF seemed a bit extraneous to the story to me. I did love the language the author used in her writing of the story.
Thursday, 4 June 2020
Eight Perfect Murders
by Peter Swanson
This is the first mystery book that I have read in which the narrator was a murderer.
It starts off introducing us to a man who is co-owner of a book store specializing in mystery books. An female FBI agent comes to see him because she has noticed a connection between a list of that he created on a blog of perfect murders seem to match some recent murders. Most of the books are classic murder mysteries including one Agatha Christie Book, the ABC murders. The agent gets him to come with her as part of her investigation of one murder, a women he knew, a former client. There he finds the books he mentioned in his list on her bookshelf.
The young agent is found to be in conflict of interest, one of her family members was murdered, and she is taken off the case. Some other agents come to visit the man. He suspects they may be suspecting him.
We learn that the man had an unfaithful wife, who fell back into drug use when she met another man, a supporter of the arts. The man's wife and this man also had an affair. The main characters wife, we are told, died in a car crash.
The man had gone onto the dark web and threw out an invitation for someone to join him in a murder pact like in one of the books he referenced. The man wants his wife's lover murdered and another man comes forward who wants a person murdered. They commit the crimes as agreed.
As things are progressing the man thinks that his accomplice may plan to out him and he gets worried. He asks some questions of a policeman he knows. Then thinks perhaps he shouldn't have.
It turns out that the accomplice was the policeman. In the end the main character goes to the house of his dead female customer with plans to drown himself in the lake/river on her property.
It was an interesting story, I didn't really suspect the man was a murderer. We find out that not only did he get his wife's lover killed, he killed his wife by forcing her car off the road.
This is the first mystery book that I have read in which the narrator was a murderer.
It starts off introducing us to a man who is co-owner of a book store specializing in mystery books. An female FBI agent comes to see him because she has noticed a connection between a list of that he created on a blog of perfect murders seem to match some recent murders. Most of the books are classic murder mysteries including one Agatha Christie Book, the ABC murders. The agent gets him to come with her as part of her investigation of one murder, a women he knew, a former client. There he finds the books he mentioned in his list on her bookshelf.
The young agent is found to be in conflict of interest, one of her family members was murdered, and she is taken off the case. Some other agents come to visit the man. He suspects they may be suspecting him.
We learn that the man had an unfaithful wife, who fell back into drug use when she met another man, a supporter of the arts. The man's wife and this man also had an affair. The main characters wife, we are told, died in a car crash.
The man had gone onto the dark web and threw out an invitation for someone to join him in a murder pact like in one of the books he referenced. The man wants his wife's lover murdered and another man comes forward who wants a person murdered. They commit the crimes as agreed.
As things are progressing the man thinks that his accomplice may plan to out him and he gets worried. He asks some questions of a policeman he knows. Then thinks perhaps he shouldn't have.
It turns out that the accomplice was the policeman. In the end the main character goes to the house of his dead female customer with plans to drown himself in the lake/river on her property.
It was an interesting story, I didn't really suspect the man was a murderer. We find out that not only did he get his wife's lover killed, he killed his wife by forcing her car off the road.
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