A MURDER IN PARIS by Matthew Blake

4 stars

This twisty psychological thriller alternates between two timelines in Paris: the 1945 return of French refugees from the Nazi prison camps to the present day where London-based memory psychologist Olivia Finn gets summoned to Paris as her 96-year-old grandmother, famous painter Josephine Benoit, has told the police that she has a murder to confess.

Josephine has seated herself under her most famous painting that graces the Hotel Lutetia’s lobby, the painting featuring a teen girl newly liberated from the camps, looking simultaneously broken and defiant, waiting in one of the Hotel’s rooms to be sorted by French authorities. Josephine, who has advancing Alzheimer’s, declares that her real name is Sophie Leclear and that she switched identities with the murdered Josephine. Olivia sweeps in from London, stunned by her grandmother’s recitation – and promptly takes Josephine/Sophie back to her apartment while waiting for next steps by the police. She turns to her famous mentor, French memory expert Louis de Villefort, who specialized in recovering repressed memories and sends his son who’s in town from New York City to help Olivia out. When Olivia heads out for a brief visit to an internet café, someone breaks into her grandmother’s apartment and kills her.

Here begins the two parallel story lines: what happened to Olivia’s grandmother once rescued from the Nazi camps, and what trauma happened to Olivia that led her to come to Paris as a teen to live with her grandmother, become a patient of Villefort and eventually a psychotherapist specializing in recovering repressed traumatic memories. Sprinkled along with the highly charged plot where Olivia fears for her life and works to resolve the mystery of her grandmother’s past is much debate over the validity of repressed traumatic memories and their dependability.

While you can see a bit too easily where the plot is veering and you have to push your skepticism about how Olivia’s handles this aside, the non-stop twists and the pondering over the trustability of our memories keeps you hooked.

Thanks to Harper and NetGalley for an advanced reader’s copy.

Stacy DeBroff

Stacy DeBroff, founder and CEO of Mom Central.com and social and digital consultancy, Influence Central, is a social media strategist, attorney, and best-selling parenting author. A sought-after expert for national media, she trend-spots regularly with national brands and speaks frequently to national and international audiences on a wide range of subjects, including influencer marketing, social media, entrepreneurship, and consumer trends. A passionate cook, gardener, reader, and tennis player, she adores this new chapter of post-college-age parenting.