THE LAST TIME I SAW PARIS

Manhattan, New York. May 8, 1940.

Claire Harris Stone breathed in the faint scent of roses from the courtyard garden below as her yielding body swayed to the strains of "In the Mood" drifting out the open French doors. The sounds of the orchestra inside her Manhattan brownstone blended with the late-night rumble of traffic along Fifth Avenue.

Buoyed by the Veuve Clicquot champagne, she felt as though she drifted above her partner as their gliding shoes whispered against the balcony floor. He held her tight, his hands warming her body through her thin silk dress. Her arms were draped around his shoulders.

He was tall. That was nice. And he knew how to dance; even better.

"You're dreaming, Claire," von Richter said.

"Of you." Claire opened her eyes.

The Last Time I Saw Paris
Lynn Sheene


I love, love, love this book. I procrastinated on finishing the last few pages of the book because I didn't want it to end. Ms. Sheene has written a superlative first novel. I eagerly await her second, Under Paris Skies.

I've been recommending this book right and left, have purchased a copy after obtaining it first from the library, and have ordered one for a friend. A very, very good read.

THE LAST GOOD DAY

It was early on one of those powder-blue late-September mornings when middle-aged commuters stand on platforms, watching airplanes pass before the sun and hoping the apex of some great arc in their lives hasn't already been reached.


On the far side of the Hudson from the train station, the Rockland County palisades glinted as if they'd been freshly chopped by God's own cleaver. From the rustling trees along the shoreline came the same sound of money in the wind that the old Dutch trades must have heard when they first rounded this little bend in the river.


The water was brownish and turbulent, as if a low flame were on underneath it. Out by the narrowing of the channel, a forty-five-foot cabin cruiser skimmed across the surface, leaving a broad foamy cape. The ripples spread, pushing the cattails and the submerged bluish-gray mass closer to the crooked-in elbow of land beside Riverside Station.


"Hey, what is that thing?" said Barry Shulman, standing at the platform railing.
The Last Good Day
Peter Blauner

I ran onto Peter Blauner as one of the writers in Nelson DeMille's Mystery Writers of America Presents The Rich and the Dead. I made a list of most of the authors and this one by Peter Blauner is the first I've read from that list.

Excellent book. I was captivate from the first. More suspense than mystery, but that's only good. I'll read more from Blauner's backlist.