Book Review: The City of Blood

Book: The City of Blood (Paris Homicide book #3) by Frédérique Molay with translations by Jeffrey Zuckerman

Source: Borrowed from Publisher/NetGalley for an honest review

Publication: Available now

Description:

When a major Parisian modern art event gets unexpected attention on live TV, Chief of Police Nico Sirsky and his team of elite crime fighters rush to La Villette park and museum complex. On the site of the French capital's former slaughterhouses, the blood is just starting to flow, and Sirsky finds himself chasing the butcher of Paris, while his own mother faces an uncertain future.


Rating: 2 1/2 stars

Review:

This had a good story and mystery but there were a few times when the pacing was a little slow and I found that there were a lot of characters in this story to keep track of. Sometimes the dialogue was little a cheesy.

In this mystery Police Chief Nico Sirsky and the rest of his squad were trying to solve a 30 year old murder that centered around human remains which were found after an art exhibit by Samuel Cassian had been unearthed for its scheduled reveal. It didn't take the police long to find out who the victim had been but trying to track down the killer was going be the hard part. The victim was the artist's son Jean-Baptiste which has the investigation centered around the world of art during the 80s.

However, just as they were started to investigate there was another murder committed not far from where the buried art exhibit was. College student Mathiew Leroy was murdered and left near another art exhibit. Were the two murders connected or was it a strange coincidence?

With yet another murder victim Florian Bonnet found it's possible the police are going to have to stop a serial killer before the murders escalate. The killer seems to be targeting young gay men who look similar to Jean-Baptiste. But is there more to it?

Although Police Chief Sirsky was doing everything he could to get these murders solved and find the killer he was also dealing with a personal problem. His mother had become seriously ill.

I think this would have been much better if some of the information had been cut down because a lot of it didn't have much purpose and it certainly didn't add to the story. And as I mentioned above there were too many characters to keep track of which kind of detracted from the story. I thought it was nice that so many of the characters were so nice but that was part of the problem it's hard to imagine almost all the characters being so kind and considerate.

Overall, the mystery had been very suspenseful and interesting but the story flaws took away from it.