Paris In the Dark

Description

Autumn 1915. World War I is raging across Europe but Woodrow Wilson has kept Americans out of the trenches - though that hasn't stopped young men and women from crossing the Atlantic to volunteer at the front. Christopher "Kit" Cobb, a Chicago reporter with a second job as undercover agent for the U.S. government, is officially in Paris doing a story on American ambulance drivers, but his intelligence handler, James Polk Trask, soon broadens his mission. City-dwelling civilians are meeting death by dynamite in a new string of bombings, and the German-speaking Kit seems just the man to figure out who is behind them - possibly a German operative who has snuck in with the waves of refugees coming in from the provinces and across the border in Belgium. But there are elements in this pursuit that will test Kit Cobb, in all his roles, to the very limits of his principles, wits, and talents for survival. 'Historical thriller that combines a fast-moving plot with complex characters.' - Sunday Times 'Written in a hard-boiled, staccato style, Paris in the Dark is an intelligent, stylish thriller, and so atmospheric that the pages reek of Gitanes and coffee' - Times 'A top historical espionage thriller, tautly plotted and told with humanity and realism. Rich characterisation and an authenticity that I found gripping from the first page to the last.' - CJ Carver

Robert Olen Butler is the Pulitzer Prize-winning author of A Good Scent from a Strange Mountain, and sixteen other novels including Hell, A Small Hotel, Perfume River, and the Christopher Marlowe Cobb series. He is also the author of six short story collections and a book on the creative process, From Where You Dream. He has twice won a National Magazine Award in Fiction and received the 2013 F. Scott Fitzgerald Award for Outstanding Achievement in American Literature. He teaches creative writing at Florida State University.

Written in a hard-boiled, staccato style, Paris in the Dark is an intelligent, stylish thriller, and so atmospheric that the pages reek of Gitanes and coffee * Times * A morally complex and beautifully written thriller with a delicately portrayed love story at its heart. A cut above * Mail on Sunday * A thriller of great depth and intelligence -- Nick Rennison * The Sunday Times * A riveting thriller with impressively well-developed characters and such rich historical detail that is hard to put down * Daily Express * As well as being a top thriller, Paris In The Dark oozes the atmosphere of the city at that time - you can almost smell the Gauloises, not to mention the tension and fear -- Jon Wise * The Sunday Sport *