Paris police detective Henri Lefort is assigned to investigate the murder of a German major at the Louvre in July 1940. He has only a week to solve the crime and identify the killer. This leads to some drastic actions on his part..

This is an interesting portrayal of Paris in the early stages of the Nazi occupation in WW2, especially how they set about looting French art treasures.

More interesting for me is the backstory of Lefort, which is gradually revealed in the telling of the murder investigation. There's shocking revelations near the end of the story which surprised me.

A good read even though not all of the mysteries are resolved at the end. ( )

A German officer in occupied Paris has been murdered in the Louvre. Robbery Detective Henri Lefort is pulled from the case he was about to investigate and place in the Murder Division. His assignmet is to find the killer. However the German's bar him from viewing the murder scene and give a list of six suspects. Oh, and he has only a week to solve the murder or the German's, to say the least, make his life miserable. ( )

When I heard that Mark Pryor is starting another series instead of adding books to his already existing two, I was not sure what to expect - the only similarity between his other two series is that they are crime-related one. This one takes the setting of his main series (Paris) but moves it back in time (to the start of the occupation of Paris during WWII for the main part of the story) and picks up the psychological part of his other series (and puts it in a historical context). The main character, Inspector Henri Lefort, is different from the protagonists of the other two series but he has some of the ruthlessness of Dominic and the investigative abilities of Hugo. But you do not need to have read any of Pryor's books before - pulling it back in time makes connections improbable (if anything, if we ever see another Hugo Marston novel, that past may show up there).

It is the early days of the German occupation of Paris in 1940 and the people of the city are still learning how to live with the new power. Everyone who could have moved, had already left Paris but that still left a lot of people to deal with the changes and with feeling unwelcome in their own home.

Henri Lefort is an unorthodox police inspector, a veteran of the previous war and not very likely to play nice with the same Germans he once fought with. When a German officer is found dead in the Louvre, the German command asks for him specifically and gives him 5 days to solve the murder. If he cannot? He dies. In the new Paris, it is easy as that. The Germans are even going to help him - they give him a list of suspects - all of them French of course.

Meanwhile, he had attended a presumed robbery and met Princess Marie Bonaparte (who insists on being called Mimi), a descendant of the Emperor and a psychoanalyst who had worked with Freud and she becomes professionally interested in the troubled man and offers him a deal - she will help him by opening any door he needs opened in the city (even under Occupation, she is an influential woman after all) if he tells her his own story. Each of them has their reasons and Henri is sure he can keep his secrets even while telling her a life story - because telling the complete truth is not something he ever plans to do. Except things go a bit differently. The Princess is a real historical figure, he meetings with the young inspector - not so much. But as in any good historical novel, the merging of the real with the imaginary is flawless - she does not read like a historical figure shoved into a novel to connect it to the times, she reads like any other character in the novel.

The murder becomes almost a background - it will get solved eventually but it shares the limelight with Henri's story of WWI and with the picture of Paris under occupation and the build-up of parts of the Resistance. Despite having a crime at the heard of it, it is more a historical novel than a crime one - in both of its timelines.

And as for Henri's secrets - Pryor manages to handle them well enough to cause a surprise without them coming out of nowhere - he adds enough bread crumbs for a reader to get an inkling of them coming but with enough doubt for one to wonder if this is where the story is going. I also appreciated the details which made the whole scenario possible and believable - while the way Henri ended up back in Paris after the previous war uses a somewhat familiar twist, the details on how it worked back in WWI and how it had worked since are refreshingly believable (and not left with hand-waving explanation of missing years and time passed).

There is already an announced second book in this series so I will be interested to see what Henri gets to next and to see more of occupied Paris. ( )

Die Around Sundown by Mark Pryor
Inspector Henri Lefort #1. Historical mystery, police procedural.
Summer 1940. In German-occupied Paris, Inspector Henri Lefort is given 5 days to solve a murder of a German major. He is not given access to the site of the murder but he is given a list of supposed suspects. His career and life is on the line. If Henri doesn’t solve the murder, it’s been implied that he will be no longer be in Paris much less alive to see another day.

Along with the mystery solving, we learn about Henri’s background from the prior war as he talks with a therapist in exchange for a good glass of wine. Henri hopes that by talking through his history he will learn to tolerate the sounds of gum chewing or someone eating celery. The horrors of war and Henri’s younger impressions are vividly described as he remembers his first investigation.
Solid secondary characters such as Pablo Picasso giver the story depth and intrigue.

Not at all my typical read but engrossing and enriching, all the same.
Thanks to @MinotaurBooks for an advance copy though it took me almost a year to actually read this. ( )

Die Around Sundown is the first book in a new series by this author. While I did find the overall story enjoyable with two separate mysteries to unravel, I found I was not as engaged in the story as I thought I would be. That being said, this is the first book where the author is setting the scene, the characters, the atmosphere, and so on, and I do think there is a lot of potential here for some really interesting story lines to develop.

First of all, I did find the main character to be quite engaging. Detective Henri Lefort is an interesting character, a wise-cracking older detective who served in WW1 and struggles with shell shock. Angry at the German invasion into his city and the subsequent subjugation of the French people, Lefort has to temper his prejudices and learn to deal with the Germans and their growing crackdown on his people. Although the author doesn't directly state he has shell shock, Lefort has trouble dealing with everyday loud sounds so the reader understands what is happening without it being discussed. Personally, I like how his quirks were introduced as part of his personality and the reader slowly gains an understanding of his past through learning about those 'quirks' and realizing how serious they really are. The more I learned, the more I developed empathy for him.

The rest of the characters were nicely developed as well and I look forward to learning more about them in subsequent books. I particularly enjoyed Mimi Bonaparte, a descendant of Napoleon; she was known for her interest in psychology, a new and somewhat scary field during this time period, a study which women were not really encouraged to pursue so I was fascinated by the scenes in which she was involved. I do know a bit about her background so I am really curious as to how the author will use her in future books.

The plot itself was somewhat predictable, especially the second one involving Lefort. I did find it interesting however, even if I figured it out quite early on. I wondered how the author was going to conclude the situation and I wasn't disappointed. There was one clue that I missed completely so I was a bit gobsmacked at learning that truth, something I appreciated. It's always nice when you don't see a twist coming your way even thought the signs were there.

I felt like the author did a really good job at describing the tense atmosphere during this time period. Lefort is quite a complex character, but I did feel like the Germans were much more one-dimensional stereotypical characters with little depth to them. I hope as the series progresses, the author does pay more attention to all of the characters as it will definitely enrich the overall story. I also thought the pacing of the story was somewhat uneven where the tension was quite high, but then it was broken completely by the other mystery. While I did enjoy the two mysteries, I did feel like they interfered with each other and created the uneven feel to the book; it did affect the tension and the overall fel of the story.

Verdict
Die Around Sundown was a solid start to a new series. I liked the fact the story is told from the point of view of the French police during this time period and I am looking forward to some real conflict as the war continues and sides need to be taken as they didn't have an easy time during the Occupation. This was a quick read and I do think readers will appreciate the insights into life at the beginning of the Occupation and the start of the Resistance. The mystery itself was a standard mystery, a bit predictable, but enjoyable nonetheless. I am interested in seeing what is in story for Henri in the next book, The Dark Edge of Night.

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