A Paris Bookshop Mystery

Paris 1890. Lady's maid Denise le Louarn fears the worst when her mistress, Odette de Valois, vanishes from the Père-Lachaise cemetery during a visit to her husband's grave. All alone in the great metropolis, Denise knows just one person she can go to for help: Victor Legris. When the frightened girl turns up at his bookshop and tells him her story, Victor feels there must be a simple explanation for her disappearance. But as he begins to look into the matter, it soon becomes clear that something sinister lies behind events at the Père-Lachaise cemetery.

1891. At dawn on the Boulevard Montmartre, the body of a barefoot young woman wearing a lavish red dress is found brutally murdered. That same day, a single red shoe is delivered to the Elzévir Bookshop, owned by amateur sleuth Victor Legris. Victor and his team of booksellers feel compelled to investigate. When they discover a corpse in a wine barrel, and then a dancer strangled in her apartment, a treacherous trail unfolds through the gleaming nightclubs, bustling cabaret bars and dark alleyways of Montmartre.