Murder Below Montparnasse

It's the 13th title in Black's brisk, engaging "Aimée Leduc Investigation" series, and where is her friend and business partner, René Friant? He's gone to Zeelakon Vallaay (that's Silicon Valley, English speakers) for a six-figure job and some troubles of his own. But that doesn't keep Aimée from plunging into another juicy, culturally intriguing case. When she's picked up after an assignment by Leduc's part-time hacker, Saj, he passes along a request from potential client Yuri Volodya, who claims to have known Aimée's mother. That's enough to make her persuade Saj to steer toward Volodya's door, but as they arrive Saj hits and evidently kills a man emerging from between two cars. The man is Serb mafia, bad news for Saj. Meanwhile, Volodya reports that he's been robbed of a precious painting, though he's pretty cat-and-mouse about whether Aimée should hunt it down. Aimée learns something about the painting—a portrait that could change our sense of a key historical figure—and about her mother, a shadowy but significant figure in the series we'll need to rethink.