'Murder in Montparnasse' by Howard Engel

Ahhhhhh. How refreshing. It's like two months of hot, sticky heat, the occasional breezy evening, but then the heaven's open and you get caught in the cool, rejuvenating shower.

I have read some crap lately. Not to say that Halberstam was poor writing but it was rather dry and I was into it for over a year. 'Murder in Montparnasse was a huge suprise and I loved every second of it. I honestly said out loud, 'I wish this book would keep going on forever.' It was not that the story's plot was incredibly engaging. It has far more to do with how the characters were presented and their perceptions of the world translated on the page.
The story follows Mike Ward, a Canadian would-be writer, in Paris for the first time translating new stories from french for the Toronto Star. As he meets and, consequently, gets drawn into a circle of other, relatively unknown, artists, we see his life fill out. The characters in this novel are all thinly veiled versions of actual persons of the era. Hemingway, Fitzgerald, and on. Reading about the behaviour of these characters fascinates the reader and draws them into a real life experience set in Montparnasse in the 1920's. These elevated artists become real to you as you see how they behave and interact and, most curiously, with whom they become romantically entwined.

The plot is secondary to the characters and 'cut through the bullshit' style of setting the mood. Paris' Jack the ripper is killing and gives one of the crew a perfect opportunity to kill an enemy while making it seem as though it was the act of the homicidal maniac.

He does not get away with it but who cares. The cool water of each page cleansed my reader's soul and I hope I can soon find another book equally as satisfying.