Customer Reviews:
 The Usual Mixed Bag March 17, 2008
A. Ross (Washington, DC)
In my youth and teen years, I was a frequent visitor to Paris, but since I haven't been there in more than a decade, I was excited to pick up this collection and "catch up" on the city. The title and subtitle are a little misleading, as not all the eighteen entries are "crime" stories. Rather, as the back jacket copy says, they are about the "sinister side" of Paris. For example, the first story, John Harvey's "Minor Key," tells of the wasted talent of a drug-addicted jazz trumpeter in the 1950s with Harvey's typical lyrical and lonely voice. Another example is the always-excellent John Williams's 1981-set story of a group of English teen buskers hanging around Paris for a summer, falling in, and failing at love. Easily the biggest outlier is Michael Moorcook's "The Flâneur of Les Arcades de l'Opéra," a 50+ page "Metatemporal" thriller featuring Nazis, interplanar travel, and the famous sword Stormbringer (from his "Elric" saga). On the one hand, one has to commend editor Jakubowski for trying to expand the scope of the anthology, however I suspect that most people who pick the book up based on its cover and title will find themselves skipping it.
Fortunately, in addition to British, American, and Canadian authors, Jakubowski has included a five French contributors (all translated by Lulu Norman and Ros Schwartz). The first of these is Marc Villard's "The Lookout," a very dark tale about the consequences of a drug bust. Jean-Hughes Oppel's "Paris Calling," is a brief and undeveloped riff on the social unrest that has brewed in France's suburbs over the last decade. Dominique Manotti's "Ethnic Cleansing," is one of the best stories in the whole book, laying how a ruthless property developer might capitalize on the stigmatization of immigrants. Dominique Sylvain's "Heatwave" is a pretty basic murder story enlivened by the two investigating cops, one a choleric white Frenchman, the other a Arab Frenchman with a zen attitude. Romaine Slocombe's story is the one true clunker in the book, managing to be both totally improbable and totally predictable.
The other stories are the usual mixed bag one finds in any anthology. Probably the best is Jason Starr's "Bar Fight," which details the titular brief encounter between an Arab and an off-duty cop, with a great twist in the last paragraph. Cara Black, who writes a series set in Paris, contributes a nice little story set in the present and hearkening back to the resistance during WWII. Barry Gifford, whom I've never really cared for, contributes a typically enigmatic tale. Editor Jakubowski throws in one of his erotic stories featuring a female hitwoman. Jerome Charyn's story about an American fraudster on the lam is moderately affecting. Jake Lamar's story about a young loner obsessed with a politician feels rather dashed off and derivative. Sparkle Hayter's story about a penniless writer's encounter with a killer is cute, but little more. Jim Nisbet's story about a bored wealthy man who moves to Paris in search of new thrills is somewhat engrossing in that it delves into the world of gay "rough trade," but doesn't lead anywhere that interesting.
Looking back at the book as a whole, it's a bit of a letdown. Too many of the stories feature non-French protagonists, which tends to give it a little bit too much of the tourist's perspective, as opposed to the native's. Also, the arrangement of the stories feels rather random -- I wish it had been chronological, since that would illuminate some of the city's changes.
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