‘You have a choice which way you go in this war…’
Paris, September 1940.
After three months under Nazi Occupation, not much can shock Detective Eddie Giral. That is, until he finds a murder victim who was supposed to be in prison. Eddie knows, because he put him there. The dead man is not the first or the last criminal being let loose onto the streets. But who is pulling the strings, and why?
This question will take Eddie from jazz clubs to opera halls, from old flames to new friends, from the lights of Paris to the darkest countryside – pursued by a most troubling truth: sometimes to do the right thing, you have to join the wrong side…
Thank you to Orion Books for very kindly sending me a proof copy of Paris Requiem, and introducing me to Chris Lloyd and Eddie Giral.
Having read The Unwanted Dead first (book #1 in the series), and having been blown away by this, I was looking forward to going into wartime Paris with Police Detective Eddie Giral again.
We arrive in Paris in September 1940 to find Eddie Giral investigating a grizzly murder in a closed Jazz Club. The way that Chris Lloyd manages to transport the reader from today back into the seedy, brittle and dangerous world of Paris under Nazi occupation, is truly fantastic. The descriptions of the places Eddie Giral visits during his investigation are really so tangible.
Paris is deeply under the grip of the Germans, and they are trying to punish its citizens by starving them, there is food but because of rationing there is not enough to go around. So amongst many other issues Eddie is starving. I thought this was really well written as it is historical fact, and it made me hungry just hearing Eddies stomach growling!
As always Eddie Giral is pulled from trying to run a Police investigation to the Germans interfering in it… in Paris Requiem we really see his moral dilemmas take a hold of him and this has the reader on the edge of their set, waiting to find out how the plot will turn out.
I’m so glad that writers like Chris Lloyd, are able to research and produce such realistic works of fiction based on fact, and I really enjoy reading novels set during WW2, its my favourite time period. Reading Chris Lloyds Paris Requiem was like watching a thrilling film, there is tension, mistrust, deceit and murder. If you like novels set during the war then there is no better place to start than with Paris Requiem. We must write about these past events, even when they are horrifying, so that we can learn from them in the future.
Another gripping and thrilling read from Chris Lloyd, 5 stars for me especially for being so realistic and gripping.
Straight after graduating in Spanish and French, he hopped on a bus from Cardiff to Catalonia where he stayed for the next twenty-odd years, first in the small and beautiful city of Girona, then in the big and beautiful city of Barcelona. He’s also lived in Bilbao, pre-empting the Guggenheim by a good few years, and in Madrid, where his love of Barcelona football club deepened. During this time, he worked as a teacher, in educational publishing, as a travel writer and as a translator. He still spends part of his day translating lofty and noble academic and arts texts.
Besides this, he also lived in Grenoble for six months, where he studied the French Resistance movement, a far deeper and more complex subject than history often teaches us and one that has fascinated him for years.
He now lives in his native Wales, where he writes crime novels and translates stuff.
The result of his lifelong interest in World War 2 and resistance and collaboration in Occupied France, The Unwanted Dead (Orion) is Chris’s first novel set in Paris, featuring Detective Eddie Giral. The series will see Eddie negotiate his way through the Occupation, trying to find a path between resistance and collaboration, all the time becoming whoever he must be to survive the ordeal descended on his home.
He also writes the Elisenda Domènech series (Canelo) set in Girona, featuring a police officer in the devolved Catalan police force. The head of an experimental Serious Crime Unit, she fights the worst of human excesses in the most beautiful of settings.
When he’s not writing or trying to keep up with his reading pile, Chris loves travelling, languages, red wine, Wales and Barça at football, Wales at rugby, cryptic crosswords, art, rock music and losing himself in European cities.
He’s especially proud to be a member of the Welsh crime writing collective Crime Cymru, the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors.
You can follow Chris Lloyd on TWITTER INSTAGRAM
Chris Lloyd has his own website HERE
You can buy Paris Requiem HERE
