April on Paris Street [Paperback]

Most Anticipated Fall Fiction from 49th Shelf

Your basic damsel-in-distress gig sounds perfect to private investigator Ashley Smeeton, whos got her own personal and professional struggles in Montreal. Against the backdrop of the winter Carnaval, the job first takes her to Paris where shes drawn into an unsettling world of mirages and masks, not to mention the murderous Bortnik brothers. When she returns to Montreal, a city rife with its own unreasonable facsimiles, the case incomprehensibly picks up again. Convinced shes being played, Ashley embarks on an even more dangerous journey into duplicity. In a world of masks behind masks, its hard to say where the truth lies.

Anna Dowdall was born in Montreal and recently moved back there, which surprised no one but her. Shes been a reporter, a college lecturer and a horticultural advisor, as well as other things best forgotten. Her well-received domestic mysteries,After the Winter and The Au Pair, feature evocative settings and uninhibited female revenge, with a seasoning of moral ambiguity and noir. She reads obscure fiction in English and French and thinks Quebec is an underrecognized mise en sc?ne for mystery and domestic suspense.

This novel is one of those guilty pleasures you sink into with abandon.

Anna Dowdall writes character-centred novels, in which Ashley Smeetons family background, lifestyle and personality are as important as the twists and turns of the plot.

Lucid, flowing prose and well-turned dialogue