{"id":1277,"date":"2014-03-01T12:59:53","date_gmt":"2014-03-01T18:59:53","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/?p=1277"},"modified":"2014-03-01T12:59:53","modified_gmt":"2014-03-01T18:59:53","slug":"rhys-bowen-city-of-darkness-and-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/rhys-bowen-city-of-darkness-and-light\/","title":{"rendered":"Rhys Bowen: City of Darkness and Light"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There\u2019s just one word for this book: delicious.\u00a0 The thirteenth installment in Rhys Bowen\u2019s fine Molly Murphy series finds Molly at home with her new baby, Liam, when all hell \u2013 literally \u2013 breaks loose.\u00a0 Molly is missing her friends from across the way, Sid and Gus, who are away in Paris; and she\u2019s missing her husband, Daniel, who is away at work almost all the time.<\/p>\n

\"cityofdarkness\"<\/a>When Daniel stops by for a quick bite to eat, the sound of breaking glass is the last thing Molly knows before she realizes her house has blown up and is on fire.\u00a0 Baby Liam is still inside as is Molly\u2019s maid \u2013 the baby makes it out fine.\u00a0 Daniel realizes he\u2019s the target of the Cosa Nostra, and he thinks it\u2019s a good idea to send Molly and baby Liam off to Paris to stay with Sid and Gus while he works things out at home.\u00a0 They\u2019ve already begged her to visit.<\/p>\n

Since her marriage, Daniel hasn\u2019t wanted Molly to continue to operate her private eye business, but she\u2019s found one way and another to get involved in solving various cases.\u00a0 In this one, after a rough ocean crossing, she and the baby finally turn up at Sid and Gus\u2019 doorstep only to discover that they have disappeared.\u00a0 Molly knows it\u2019s not like her friends to vanish when they were eagerly expecting her arrival, and she settles into their apartment (there\u2019s a crib waiting for Liam) so she can try and find them.<\/p>\n

She finds an agreeable baker\u2019s wife to watch the baby during the day, and then she\u2019s off.\u00a0 Sid and Gus live in a section of Paris full of artists \u2013 and the time Bowen is writing about, the very early 20th<\/sup> century, finds many impressionists as well as modernists like Picasso hard at work.\u00a0 Bowen folds Picasso, Lautrec, Gertrude Stein and Mary Cassatt into her story in the most natural way, and the most realized character turns out to be Mary Cassatt, at the time one of the most successful of all the impressionists (to the intense annoyance of many a male painter).<\/p>\n

I never felt that Sid and Gus would be irretrievably lost \u2013 they\u2019re too much a part of the fabric of the series \u2013 but Bowen builds suspense and tension around the murder of a successful but poorly regarded (by his peers) painter.\u00a0 This investigation allows Molly to visit all the strata of Paris, from the high to the low, while also giving a good picture of the vibrant artistic scene in Paris at the turn of the century.<\/p>\n

Bowen is very skillful at characterization, and her portrayal of the various actors in the death of the painter is sensitively and vividly done.\u00a0 She has a concise way with words, but the words she chooses are evocative and memorable.\u00a0 Sending Molly to Paris turns out to be a breath of fresh air for this long running and enjoyable series, and I so look forward to Molly\u2019s continued juggling act of her marriage, her baby, and her desire to investigate every crime she stumbles across.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

There\u2019s just one word for this book: delicious.\u00a0 The thirteenth installment in Rhys Bowen\u2019s fine Molly Murphy series finds Molly at home with her new baby, Liam, when all hell \u2013 literally \u2013 breaks loose.\u00a0 Molly is missing her friends from across the way, Sid and Gus, who are away in Paris; and she\u2019s missing … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[10],"class_list":["post-1277","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-reviews","tag-historical"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1277"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1279,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1277\/revisions\/1279"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1277"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1277"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/auntagathas.com\/aa\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1277"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}