rules of shopping in Paris

Have you ever wondered about the Paris shops with a sign 'entrée libre' - not so common any more - but you can still find shops with a sign on the door reading “entrée libre”— literally “free” or “unrestricted entry.” When I first visited here this struck me as very odd. Why have a sign on a store announcing that people can come in? Isn’t that pretty much what having a store is all about? Isn’t it kind of like having a sign on a preschool saying “children allowed”? I imagined an entrepreneur giving a pitch to potential investors: “I’ve got this incredible revolutionary idea for a retail venture. You’ll probably think I'm crazy but just hear me out. What I’m going to do is rent a ground-floor storefront space, fix it up nicely, stock it with products, and then — hold on to your seats now, because this is the really beautiful part — I’m actually going to let people come in, off the street, and purchase the goods! Yes! Try to picture it! But we’ve got to move fast before someone else beats us to it!”
Later it occurred to me that maybe the reason for the entrée libre sign was to distinguish these shops from the exclusive jewelers and antique dealers that only receive customers by appointment. But even that turned out to be wrong. The point is this: traditionally, entry to a French retail outlet is by default not free and unrestricted — the understanding is that once you set foot inside you are going to buy something. You can’t be “just looking.” I say “traditionally” because most stores no longer observe this custom. Over the past 20 years or so, entrée libre has become the default — except for food shops, which are still the holdout. That’s why most butchers, bakers, greengrocers and fish mongers are open to the street or have a huge display window: you’re supposed to be able to see their wares before entering and refrain from taking up their space, time, attention and oxygen unless you have firm plans to blow some euros.
But the first rule of course is to say Bonjour/Madame Monsieur and make eye contact with the shopkeeper. If you don't that's a sign of disrespect and that you are a foreigner. After all, this is the shopkeeper's 'maison' and you as such are a semi-invited guest.
Shoppers violate this rule at their peril. I once went to a wine shop hoping to find a specific brand of an obscure aperitif. There were four or five customers ahead of me and only one clerk. All of the bottles on sale were readily visible and, seeing that they didn’t have what I wanted and that it might be 15 minutes before I could even explain this (another unposted rule: no talking to the sales staff out of turn), I wheeled around and headed for the door. The clerk was vividly unhappy about this and called after me, “Oh, Madame!” with a look of outraged exasperation on his face, as though I had just loudly released a fog of paint-blistering flatulence and was now fleeing the scene. In the civic interest, I would suggest that to avoid confusion, the remaining non-entrée libre stores put up a notice saying the exact opposite: “sortie payante” – entry may be free, but getting out is going to cost you.


Cara - Tuesday home respite from the road

What the French are obsessing about, Chirac, ETA, diamonds in the drain

Here's the update on Chirac; no guillotine and not even a trial.

Following up on Chirac’s case from last week’s post - his criminal trial began Monday, but it was quickly suspended. Mr. Chirac, 78, the first head of state to be tried since the Vichy leader Philippe Pétain was convicted of treason in 1945, is accused of padding the Paris payroll with ghost workers who were political cronies while he was mayor from 1977 to 1995.

But on Monday, his lawyers challenged a previous decision to dismiss a statute of limitations on the charges, arguing that it violated the Constitution. The judge suspended the hearing, saying he would rule later on whether the issue should be evaluated by the Court of Cassation, which could delay the trial for months. So, as some Paris pundits predict, a lot might happen before then. Or not.



This weekend a Basque ETA leader, one of four ETA suspects, was discovered in an operation by French police and the antiterrorist unit. This strikes home since Murder in Passy, my new book set in 1997, deals with the ETA and the Basque struggle. Even now they are still making headlines.

Arriola, alias 'Xarlas', the "new military chief of ETA," was arrested in a house where firearms and documents were seized.

ETA is blamed for the deaths of 829 people in its four-decade campaign of bombings and shootings to force the creation of a Basque homeland in northern Spain and southwestern France.





Spanish authorities believe their campaign against ETA has crippled its operational capacity, with dozens of arrests, including a number of top leaders, made in co-operation with France.

ETA declared on January 10 a "permanent and general ceasefire" to be verified by the international community.

It was the first unilateral declaration of a permanent ceasefire in ETA's campaign of bombings and shootings for a homeland independent of Spain. But Spain's Prime Minister rejected the declaration, saying he wanted nothing less than ETA's dissolution, and the authorities have vowed to hunt down ETA members.ETA had announced a ceasefire in March 2006 within the framework of negotiations with Madrid. But nine months later, it set off a bomb in the car park of Madrid's airport, killing two men.

There has been no attack on Spanish soil since August 2009.



Remember those jewels thieves in drag who robbed Harry Winston’s off the Champs Elysees a few Christmasses ago?


Part of the loot has been discovered in a sewer drain on the outskirts of Paris. Nineteen rings and three sets of earrings – one pair valued at €14 million were dug up from a drain hidden in a plastic container set in a cement mold inside the sewer. The bold Harry Winston jewel robbery on Dec. 5, 2008, netted the thieves – some dressed as women and wearing wigs – gems and bejewelled watches worth up to €85 million

The Harry Winston boutique is on a street off the Champs-Elysees Avenue dotted with fashion houses and cafés. The robbery, carried out while Christmas shoppers strolled outside, was among the most audacious in France in recent memory.



The heist's suspected mastermind, had been sentenced to 15 years in prison in a drug trafficking case. On a tip, Police discovered stolen jewellery and €760,000 at his house. And in the drain.

A guard at the Harry Winston boutique put police on the trail of the suspects. When investigators learned that an Israeli was expected in Paris to buy some of the stolen jewels, police moved in to make the arrests.

Cara - Tuesday on the book tour

a man walks into a room with a gun....

Raymond Chandler is quoted as saying whenever he ran out of ideas when writing he always fell back on having a man walk into a room with a gun.
Today we'd want to know the model and a plethora of other things about this gun. And of course nowadays really shooting one is almost mandatory if you're writing crime fiction.

I get a lot of questions about ‘flics’. That’s the term for police in Paris my French friends use. I use flic in my books and people always ask does that mean ‘cop’ and I say oui. Some Parisians still call police ‘poulet’ which means chicken. It’s not prejorative but stems from the ancient days when the Prefecture, the Paris central police building, was built over the old chicken market. Go figure but the name’s stuck over the centuries. “Gendarmes’ aren’t exactly police since 1) they’re under the Ministry of Defense kind of para-military 2) they only operate outside Paris

Paris has it’s own force so to speak and yet there are lots of divisions and bureaus and some fall under the Ministry of Interior and some under the Ministry of Defense. It gets ‘tres complique’ as they say and I’ve got the organizational charts and diagrams a Police commissioner gave me somewhere but hey…I’d rather tell you about a memorable occasion with the flics when I got to shoot a gun. Over the years researching in Paris for my books, I’ve met private detectives, flics, some ministry officials who greatly contribute to details and procedure in my work. They help me a lot and I’m eternally grateful.

But it happened by chance one day that I got to go a Paris Police firing range. Pure luck and incredible timing, as a lot of things do in Paris; the right time, the right person and my friend’s cousin. My friend, (name withheld to protect the undercover officer’s ID), is a Paris Police officer, she used to be a ‘flic’ and walk the street beat for ten years in the Bastille area. Now she’s in a mobile undercover squad and can’t tell me the name of it – secret – but at this time she walked the beat. We were having lunch in a Montmartre bistro and I was asking about her cases, her co-workers and somehow we got around to gun practice. I think I said, ‘so I guess you have to go outside of Paris to keep up your skills or something, right?’ I mean I couldn’t imagine a densely populated city like Paris with firing ranges. She blinked ‘Not at all, I practice not far from here. Matter of fact my cousin supervises the range.’ Needless to say, after I ordered her a special dessert she said ‘Like to see it? I’ll call and see if he’s there.’

It was a hot September day, I wore flipflops and light pants but that didn’t deter me.’I'd love to,” I said and thank God I had my camera. After several calls and arrangements, we hopped in (name withheld) car and ended up under railway lines in an old rail warehouse. Nothing official, no signs only a fence to cross. Not far from the the Gare du Nord but in Paris. (Name withheld) cousin seemed thrilled to see her and there was lots of cheek kissing with him and with all the ‘flics’ and CRS the riot squad guys there practicing. I think we kissed about six guys. Can you imagine doing that here? But in France that’s what you do, even if you don’t know each other. It’s like a handshake.

Inside it was pure warehouse with redpaper figure targets at one end, a tar-like stretch with white lines in between and just plop yourself where you like and start shooting at the end. I mean all the distance markers were in meters and I felt clueless. One flic smiled, pointed at the target ‘take it from here’ then he handed me a Manhurin hand gun.

(They now use Sig Sauers but in 2005 when I went to the range – and my hair was red then – the flics still used Manhurin.) Just like that. Weren’t you supposed to wear ear muffs and visors? I must have looked surprised because they all burst out laughing ‘Silleee amercaine’ then handed me ear muffs and a visor. I shot beebee guns when I was a kid, but only a real pistol once at a practice firing range in San Francisco. And that had been six years before. I smiled and said ‘(Name withheld) you go first.’

Well (Name withheld) did and hit the target’s face bullseye about ten times. Now my turn. Everyone was smiling and watching me, standing in a skirt and flipflops. The Manhurin was heavy and I kept closing my eyes every time I fired…a big no no. Total amateur me. The upshot being I at least hit the paper 7 out of 10 times. I don’t think those flics ever laughed that hard at the firing range before.

‘Don’t you want to bring your trophy home,’(Name withheld) asked. So we tramped over the tar-like stretch with spent bullet casings and got them. I picked up a few spent shells, put them in a Baggie so I’d have them to refer to when I got home. Outside the range they figured they’d have more fun and decided to handcuff me.

Flashing ahead…back home in San Francisco two weeks later, unpacking my suitcase. There’s the baggie with the shell casings…how in the heck did that go through security in my luggage? I’d forgotten about it. And then I put my flipflops on but they were scruntchy and hard. So I turned them over and found the flipflop soles studded with bullet casings. They must have melted in from tar-like surface. And these had gone thru security too…Make you wonder doesn’t it about TSA…
Nothing to do with this post but a photo from CrimeFest in Bristol with Peter, Emily and Stan after a whiff of Yrsaa's shark!

Cara - Tuesday
Book Launch next week

the things our friends do

Lee Loffland's The Graveyard Shift blog a few days ago spoke about how hard it's getting for writers to find good murder spots.

So difficult these days, he says. He suggests to take a weekend road trip to find those pesky, hard-to-find murder scenes.

Lee says "Not all murderers choose to do their dirty work in the comfort of someone’s warm and cozy brick rancher on So Sweet Lane in Lovelytown, USA. Sometimes, assassins are a bit creative when it comes to disposing of the fruits of their labor. In fact, victims have been found in really odd places, like…old, rat-infested, abandoned factories, dilapidated houses, inside rusty farm machinery, lying miles-deep in the woods, a railroad car, inside discarded barrels, inside water towers and tanks, under water, a chimney, and hanging from the rafters in a barn. So why not be creative when writing your murder scenes? The real killers sure are."

Lee's in law enforcement.

Our blog writers fit that bill. We think global and creativity abounds in Brazil, Iceland, Greece, the UK, Bangkok, France, Africa and make use of our distinctive landscape for a good killing. For me, it's an extended road trip over the big pond.

In my case, Paris, a densely populated city, poses sometimes unique issues - a spectrum of difficulty in where to put that body. My constant challenges are those annoying passersby, the curious concierge at the window, the late night

reveler's stumbling in a passage...nuisances really when you need to kill someone and hide their body.

So I ask my friends for help. Carla, the 'victim' in the orange-red raincoat above took some persuading over a chocolat chaud to agree. But what are friends for I asked? I needed to visualize the setting, the distances, the greenery and put a body there. Turns out I used this house in Paris (unknown to the owners and plan to keep it that way) and moved the body to the back near the shrubbery. Carla's often called on to give 'service' and help out in a variety of circumstances. Most recently in climbing over a metal spiked fence into a park near Place de la République and seeing if she could do it in under two minutes. It worked and I can't thank her enough. It totally changed a plot point in the story.

Now of course if one uses interior locations - an apartment, chateau in the country, museum, or the catacombs they offer distinct possibilities but tie more directly back to the perpetrator. Whose apartment or chateau?

An abandoned phantom Metro station?

What about a vigilant guard in the museum, a video camera in the street making this prospective narrow passage impossible





Of course underground tunnels in Paris always make a good body stash



What about you? Any friends you call on for that hard to pinpoint murder location?



Cara - Tuesday



Murder in Passy comes out in two weeks. Visit http://www.carablack.com and check my events for the book tour. Would love to see you. And yes, Carla my 'victim' was on location in Passy.

danger UXB

On March 3 1942, the British RAF Bomber Command ordered a mission to destroy the Renault factory at Boulogne-Billancourt, on the fringes of Paris. Renault, at the time, built an estimated 18,000 trucks a year for Nazi forces, who had then been occupying France for two years.

One of these bombs was discovered unexploded several days ago causing 6,000 resident to be evacuated. This bomb was originally dropped 69 years ago in a successful mission involving a then record 223 aircraft.
French military experts worked from around 8am to noon to diffuse it, with the all clear being given early in the afternoon.

Men, women and children were led from their homes in the morning by some 400 policemen.
Many of the evacuees carried food and family pets with them, while some even had suitcases
"People were asked to leave their homes at dawn this morning because the bomb was considered live and dangerous," said a local police spokesman. "It was found by builders on land which was heavily bombed during the Second World War. Homes which fall within a four hundred meter radius of the bomb have been evacuated."
One of the older evacuee's shook his head and said, "It's like what happened here years ago. The horror has never stopped."

In 1942 the bombers were sent in three waves, with pilots ordered to bomb the factory as low possible so that the civilian population living nearby were not hit. Flares were also used to light up the target. Incredibly, there were no flak defences, meaning the planes could drop their explosives almost uninterrupted for a full hour and 50 minutes.
Few German fighters were scrambled against the British either, and there were no collisions, which meant that the RAF only lost a single Wellington Despite this, however, there were in fact thousands of civilian casualties, especially in apartment blocks close to the factory. While industrial areas on the outskirts of Paris were heavily bombed during the war, the historic centre of the city remained largely unscathed. The tonnage of bombs dropped – some 470 tons – was a record.
Last October in Rennes in Brittany
Sixty five years after the surrender of Germany, this city in Brittany was closed as engineers worked to defuse a 550lb RAF device. Just one of thousands dropped on northern France in 1944 as Allied troops prepared to invade.
10,000 people living in Rennes were involved in the evacuation as the center of the city resembled a ghost town.
"I remember the bombing raids during the war when hundreds were killed," said Maurice Leclerc, an 81-year-old pensioner who was among the evacuees. "The fact that the bombs are still disrupting our lives all these years on is truly incredible."
Further east, 4,500 people were moved out of Woippy, in the suburbs of Metz, as bomb disposal experts worked on devices around a former Wehrmacht supply center. It's now being converted into a bus station, but was bombed so many times during the war that its basement and foundations are littered with ordnance, including RAF and US air force devices.
All of the work was being coordinated by France's Département du Déminage - Department of Mine Clearance - which recovers around 1,000 tons of unexploded munitions every year. Since 1945, around 650 of its staff have died handling unexploded munitions, two as recently as 1998 in the former First World War battlefield of Vimy Ridge.
Their work is concentrated on the so-called 'Iron Harvest' of unexploded ordnance which is littered around the battlefields and bombing targets of northern France. Many of the devices are still live, and the workers are particularly wary of artillery shells containing chemical warfare agents like mustard gas used during the trench warfare of World War I.
Also in Italy last October the area around George Clooney's lake front villa in Italy was sealed off by Italian soldiers for a recovery operation while navy divers brought 500 pound munitions to the surface and took them to a cave to be detonated.
They had been on the floor of the lake for more than 60 years before they were discovered after a fisherman pulled a device from the lake bed.
While in Germany the affects are still felt in the unexploded bombs from the Allies. Technicians routinely clear munitions from one of the most bomb-contaminated regions in Europe -- the state of Brandenburg surrounding Berlin. In Brandenburg alone, an average of 631 tons of old munitions from the two world wars and from Soviet army exercises in East German times are found every year by builders, bomb location squads or children playing.
In the whole of Germany, more than 2,000 tons of American and British aerial bombs and all sorts of munitions ranging from German hand grenades and tank mines to Russian artillery shells are recovered each year. Barely a week goes by without a city street or motorway being cordoned off or even evacuated in Germany due to an unexploded bomb being discovered.
Most estimates for the percentage of unexploded bombs range from 5 to 15 percent -- or between 95,000 and 285,000 tons. As Germany hastily rebuilt its cities after the war, authorities didn’t have the time or the means to locate and dispose of a large part of that tonnage.

Cara - Tuesday
PS this line explodes with P's starred * Kirkus review for the forthcoming Murder in Passy: "The ideal mix of the personal, the political, the puzzling and the Parisian make Aimée's latest a perfect pleasure."

1st Books How I got started

Murder in the Marais, my first book in the Aimée Leduc Investigation series, just came out in a tenth anniversary edition. I'll be getting back from the ALA midwinter Library conference in San Diego when you read this so I'm posting a blog post I wrote for Meg Waite Clayton on her Stories of How Writers Get Started (megwaiteclayton.com/1stbooks/) last year. Meg's a great fiction writer btw check out her blog and her books even though she doesn't do murder but writes wonderful literary fiction. This is what I wrote for her blog and it reasonates for me right now because writing, like life, is a journey and I can't believe in less than two months Murder in Passy, Aimée's 11th investigation will come out.

Here's the dirty, dark secret of starting my life of crime.
When I began writing I never thought I’d finish a book much less set it in Paris, even get published or write a series.
I wasn’t a doctor, a policewoman, a sketch artist or with the FBI. I was a mom, a preschool teacher and had old friends in Paris. The total sum of my qualifications apart from reading and loving mysteries.
I did grow up in a Francophile family in the SF Bay Area and attended a French Catholic school. My father was a Francophile and loved good food and wine. In the 50’s my uncle went to France and studied with the artist George Braques, so talk at our dinner table was a lot about France. Later, I lived in Europe, mostly Switzerland and France and did every kind of black market job under the European sun.
But it was the story of my friend’s mother, a hidden Jewish girl in Paris during the German Occupation, that drove me to write. I’d heard this story when I visited the Marais with my friend and just felt somehow, someway I had to write this. As I told Meg before, this led to three and a half years of writing what became Murder in the Marais.
During the process I’d discovered I couldn’t write as a French woman, I can’t even tie my scarf the right way. But I began spending more time in Paris in the mid-1990’s to develop Aimée Leduc, my PI turned computer security sleuth. I interviewed three female detectives in Paris who ran their own detective agency and took qualities from each. It became important to me that my character Aimée be half-American, half-French be a young, contemporary woman like the Parisian women I know, have a strong fashion sense and be fierce in her pursuit of justice. The justice that eludes people sometimes in daily life. And that she know much more about computers than I do.
But when my editor accepted the first manuscript (Marais) she asked...”Where’s Aimée going next?” I hesitated. “What do you mean?” “Well, where’s she going to discover crime next. Which part of Paris?” Long pause. “You are writing the next book aren’t you...this is a series?”
“Of course,” I lied.
“You’ve started I assume?”
“Matter of fact, the story takes up right after the Marais.” I said the first thing that came into my head while running to my computer.
“Good a continuation, her next case, the next part of her life...that man she met..what about him?”
My editor was feeding me ideas and I wasn’t going to ignore them. “Yves the journalist, yes, the relationship will go somewhere and she’s going to Belleville.”
My bright idea since I’d just stayed in that district with my friend, a single mom who’s daughter was the same age as my son. I slept on her couch, took her daughter to school, paid her gas bills and saw another side of Paris in doing so.
“Belleville...where’s that?”
Ok this was before the movie Triplets of Belleville.
“But that’s where Edith Piaf lived, she sang on the streets.”
“Fine,” my editor said.
And there I was powering up my computer, searching for my notes, napkins from the Belleville bistro, my photos and I had a goal. Aimée was going to Belleville, murder somehow would be involved, a problematic relationship with Yves, the man she got involved with in the Marais, would ensue and I was off.
And that’s how it’s been with each other book. Aimée’s got office rent to pay, a business to run, upkeep on a crumbling 17th century Ile Saint Louis townhouse flat with archaic plumbing, a bichon frise named Miles Davis to walk on the quais of the Seine and a penchant for bad boys. In part Aimée’s journey; her progression in life and investigations mirror what I discover in Paris, the society, immigration issues, in that book about Belleville corruption in the government and it’s a flow streaming into politics. We meet Aimée in November 1993 and now eleven books later (in the forthcoming Murder in Passy) it’s November 1997 - only four fictional years have passed. But the background setting she experiences are the seasons, the current scandal, Princess Diana's death in the car crash. Each book is a long snapshot of the time, Aimée's life in this era in the 90’s when people still paid in francs, smoked in the cafe's, Google was still an idea in the head of two guys at Stanford. And the Paris I rediscovered visiting often for research.
But to get the details, the stories, the insight from the ‘experts’ I needed and still need help.
Friends have friends, and their introductions in Paris open doors. In my case doors to private detectives, police, and local cafe owners. Over the years I’ve built up these connections, nourished them with bottles of wine over dinner and running possible scenarios by these experts, some of whom have become friends.
“I want you to get it right,” a retired Commissaire once told me, “if you’re writing a book set in Paris, a real city, you need to get the police system and all the details correct.” I appreciate that and the time he takes meeting with me and talking. He was in charge of the Princess Diana investigation and has provided a wealth of details.
Ok so many crime writers kill people on the page for a living but in my case it pays for my habit. Going to Paris and doing research. There’s so much I don’t know, I tell my husband, so I have to visit the archives, libraries, interview computer hackers, go in the sewers, visit the Morgue etc. he just nods. “I know.” In Paris on the cobblestones, in the metro I get a spark of a story, a detail, overhear a conversation I’d never hear otherwise. My novels aren’t set in the beret and baguette Paris, or the tourist areas, but off the beaten track, the backstreets and courtyards of quartiers not often seen. More like a sociological slice of life in the darker side of the city of light. The areas Aimée explores from the quarries underground in the Latin Quarter to her decaying elegant 17th century apartment on the Ile Saint Louis. It’s a trip to Paris without the airfare to an area you probably haven’t seen before.

Over the course of the books Aimée’s developed, I’ve gotten to know her more. It’s been an organic process, certainly not one I expected. So in beginning a book, I think back to my editors words, start with a particular part of Paris that intrigues me, of a story that could only happen there and feel driven to tell it. This district of Paris is a character. The murder, while important and propels the plot, isn’t the focus, it’s how the murder impacts Aimée and why she would investigate, the family and friends surrounding the victim, the community and this little part of Paris that's affected. A way to explore moral ambiguities and the grey areas when murder isn’t black and white.

Cara - Tuesday

Year in review top lists and what do I have to add?

Everyone's done their top ten faves of the year - books, films, music etc
but instead of compiling a list I'd rather go to the circus.
If I were in Paris I'd take my friend's five year old daughter Zouzou, to
the Cirque d'hiver, the winter circus. Since 1852 the Cirque d'hiver at the juncture of the rue des Filles Calvaires and rue Amelot has been a prominent venue for circuses, horse shows, musical concerts and today fashion shows and Turkish wrestling. The circus is still run by the Bouglione family who took over in 1934. Last week the matriarch Rosa celebrated her 100th birthday in the ring with her three children and 54 grand and great grand children. Even the minister of culture attended. After Leighton posted about the Brazilian architect still humming at 103 I thought about Rosa. Honestly if you weren't an architect how much better could life be than to reach 100 still run a circus under the big top and employ generations of your family?
But the Cirque d'Hiver isn't an ordinary big top, the place is decked in red velvet with chandeliers and top acrobats who vie to perform on their circuit.
Off boulevard du Temple, once known as the 'boulevard du crime' for the countless theatres - now only a few remain - famous for the nightly performances of plays involving murder topped the bill in the belle epoque, the circus retains that bygone era.
The flying trapeze, clowns, jugglers, animals, incredible acrobatic acts, fun and laughter are what Parisians think of, when they think of a circus and the Cirque d'Hiver Bouglione is no exception. Acrobats and performers from all over the world perform in this traditional French circus.
The building itself is a must see - a unique piece of architecture - built in an oval polygon of 20 sides, with Corinthian columns at the angles, giving the impression of an oval building enclosing the oval ring, surrounded by steeply banked seating for spectators, very much like a miniature indoor Colosseum. A low angled roof is self-supporting like a low dome, so that there is no central pole, as under a tent, to obstruct views or interfere with the action. The building was designed by the architect Hittorff and opened as the Cirque Napoléon, a compliment to the new Emperor, the French Napoleon III. The sculptor Pradier was called upon to provide exterior bas-reliefs of Amazons, and Duret and Bosio sculpted the panels of mounted warriors.
The original guiding entrepreneur was Louis Dejean, the proprietor of the Cirque d'été the Summer Circus erected annually that flanked the Champs-Élysées. Dejean wagered that evening circus performances under the limelight, with the spectators well removed from the dust and smells of the tanbark floor, would provide a dress occasion for le tout-Paris and he was right.
After the Second Empire, Henri de Toulouse-Lautrec repeatedly found inspiration for his work in rehearsals and performances at the Cirque d'hiver, Georges Seurat painted an afternoon performance, with a distinctly middle-class audience, now his unfinished canvas is at the Musée d'Orsay. Since 1934 it has been the Cirque d'hiver-Bouglione, operated by Rosa and the Bouglione family in the winter. The original configuration accommodated 4,000, which has now been reduced to 2,090 due to fire codes.
At the Cirque d'hiver in 1955, Richard Avedon took his famous photograph of the fashion model "Dovima with the Elephants" to show a floor-length evening dress by Dior, one of the most iconic fashion photographs of the century..
The movie The Trapeze with Burt Lancaster, who started his career in the circus, was filmed in the Cirque d'Hiver.
So if you want to see men in tights and Gina Lolabrigida against the backdrop of the Cirque you can't go wrong.

Meanwhile if you're in snowy Paris the best way to get to Cirque d'Hiver might be like this;

Cara - Tuesday

It's not Inspector Clousseau

The French police system grows more confusing all the time. Maybe that's because Napoleon designed it that way. Civil law enforcement and the military police were structured separately but with semi-equal powers and conflicting arenas to avoid his being toppled. Waterloo did that. But Napoleon's structure is still in place. The little man still rules from the grave. Sarkozy for all his faults and more faults is in the process of streamlining, simplifying, centralizing and re-organizing the police and military services who tread on each other's riot boots. And they're not happy about it one little bit.
(See a similarity maybe small men, big ideas, glamorous wives that Napoleon and Sarko might have in common?)
But this mutual hostility in the forces goes back to Napoleon's time. What's new?
What will really change? Much of France falls under the Gendarmerie, a military force, the Gendarmes who enforce national law outside of Paris, in the countryside under the Ministry of Defense. The Police Judiciare, in Paris, in under the Ministry of Interior and so is the Renseignements Generaux, RG a very FBI-like hydra headed intelligence branch but do their own thing ie. run investigations independently. Needless to say the RG are not any one's favorite lists. But this part always confuses me and since it's changing suffice it to say the Police Judiciare - only in Paris - run their own turf and the Brigade Criminelle - the elite homicide unit handle murder and cases that perplex most others.

Not that they can't be outmanuevered by their sort of military equivalent also with power in Paris. Diferent SWAT units, counter terrorist teams get muddled here and like always I reach for a drink when this gets explained to me.
We're sitting in the Great Canadian, a noisy pub on the Seine right across from the famous 36 quai des Orfévres where many of my drinking companions work in Brigade Criminelle. Small tables huddled in the back, beer spilt and stories. Lots of stories.
I'm really impressed by these guys, actually, they're sharp, funny, self-deprecating and I like them. Even a counter terrorist specialist who speaks several Arabic dialects, is a computer whiz and shoots 15 our of 15 with this Sig Saur on target at the firing range we've been to.
He's a big bear of a man in a teddy bear way but I'd definitely want him on my side. Not the other way around. The take I get on these French flics is the human side. Maybe it's the beer talking but when I ask them about the case that's most got to them in their careers, it's the look in their eyes, this story they tell and it's not about 'the one who got away or the guy I couldn't put inside but will' it's the human toll they've witnessed at a homicide. I hear those stories; a sociopath's calm and bored recounting of why he murdered his mother and a good samaritan who came to her aid, looking into the faces of a kidnapped victim's family and informing them 'the operation wasn't successfull' after living with them for three weeks, a father who murdered his children and wife then changed his clothes and took the dog for a walk.
I asked one of them 'how do you do this work and not let it affect you, your home life?' He shrugged. 'It's my job, first of all, it's dealing with a dirty side of life everyday. I'm divorced; left the suburbs, the house, the wife and now share our children but right now all I'm thinking about is painting my daughter's room this weekend in our new apartment. And hoping we can agree on a color.' I sense something else behind his eyes and then it's gone.

(btw in January Murder in the Marais is being re-issued and with a new cover)

Cara - Tuesday

Grinding gears and what are you reading?

Books, books, books. I'm in grinding gear mode pedalling up the steep slope to meet my manuscript deadline tomorrow. Now it's hunting for a better word, polishing a detail and wait...that middle of the night sit up right in bed bolt of panic...I grab the Paris map and realize my detective would never go down that street it's one way!
So my apologies for a short post.
Tomorrow I'm looking foward to READING again at midnight after I send off my ms. Yrsa spoke about finishing a manuscript and for me, this home stretch is the best and the worst, it's that sheer moment of terror before sending a child off to college, you've prepared, prayed you've done your best and when the child goes that's it. Your child will come back, changed, smarter, more sophisticated, polished and different. But it's in the hands of god, the editor.

Tomorrow night I can't wait to READ. To dive into my big TBR pile. There's submissions for the Edgar committee, a Paris anthology of short stories to review and Yrsa's book that she kindly gave me at Bcon.
But I'm a snoop and scan what people read on the plane, on the Metro in Paris

in the doctor's office, check the book poking out of their bag, what title's on the seat of their car. Or the newspaper

Do you? During a break in a conversation, do you ask "What are you reading?" I find people love to talk about a book that touched them, how they learned something or how it inspired them to think in different ways. A book is a journey, one we we all want to take.
I check out bookstore windows, too. This month in Paris I saw RJ Ellory's Vendetta and I'd just met him at Bouchercon.

So what are YOU reading?
Cara - Tuesday on deadline

Ancien Resistant

“But no one...rien personne... acknowledges what the Jewish Resistance did.” Naftali Skrobek, 84 years old - the same age as my mother - gestures from his desk in his apartment in the Marais. Balding and short and with kind red-rimmed eyes that water frequently he offers me coffee. “The documents, I have the documents. The accounts written after the war are here, if you look for them.”
Toli, as he tells me to call him, has sat me down by a bookcase filled ceiling high with books. A veritable history collection in Yiddish and French of World War II. I’m to learn, he says, the structure of the Francs-tireurs et partisans – main-d'œuvre immigrée (FTP-MOI) who were a sub-group of the Francs-tireurs et partisans (FTP) organization, a component of the French Resistance. A wing composed mostly of foreigners and Jews, the MOI maintained an armed force to oppose the German occupation of France during World War II. The Main-d'œuvre immigrée was the "Immigrant Movement" of the FTP.
We spend a long afternoon that goes into the evening. Toli insists I understand the political and organizational structure of the Workers Communist party before he tells me his story of being in the Resistance here in the Marais, the same quarter where he lives now, from April 1944 until Liberation in August. After awhile he shows me a picture of him and his father.

Emotion clouds his face when he shows me the last picture of his father taken by the Germans in Strufhof-Natweiler concentration camp near Strausbourg before he was gassed in 1943.

I’ve found Toli through an Armenian association who promotes the activist story of the Armenian Resistance part of MOI which were recently profiled in the film The Army of Crime - a story of Isak Manouchian, an Armenian poet who ‘led’ sabotage acts against the Germans and immortalized in the famous poster l’affiche rouge...a poster that became the emblem of resistance before the group were executed in 1943.
But Toli has agreed to meet me, spend time with me, only if I get the real story. Manouchian did lead the FTP MOI group - but for three months - until a traitor revealed the group to the Gestapo. Patience, he said, and I would hear the story of his father's work in the Resistance.
Toli was born in Poland of activist Communist Jewish parents - his father was a journalist, magazine editor and militant in the Warsaw trade unions, who fled Poland in the 30’s when the government targeted him. Toli’s family found sanctuary in Paris when he was eight years old.
But given my less than perfect French and Toli’s sidetracking when I ask specifc details, we’re still in the 1930’s when it gets dark. Toli's son comes to visit and agrees to translate the intricacies of trade union organizations that I can’t ferret. ‘My father, he’s obsessed, with this.’ His son rolls his eyes. And I’m still no further in my goal of hearing Toli’s role as a 16 year old here in the Marais in the Resistance before Liberation. My real goal.
When I ask specific questions, his son translates and they argue. ‘He insists you understand the framework, the context of the time, these men who formed the organization,’ his son says throwing up his arms. Toli accuses his son of not caring or being interested. It gets uncomfortable. Finally, his son smiles and says, it takes time with my father. Bear with him. And leaves at least they’re on speaking terms.
I’ve taken notes, recorded several hours of Toli’s account and feeling still at sea, when Toli says. “Want to go for a ride? See where I lived, the bordello across the street, my school?’
Sensing this would be a way into his story, his way, I jump at the chance. Off we go. Toli, drives slow, which in Paris is more dangerous than driving at the usual breakneck speed. I close my eyes several times as taxi’s zip past almost shaving his headlights, missing a bus by centimeters but then living dangerously becomes my motto that night. If Toli fought in the Resistance against the Germans Paris traffic was nothing, right?
Over several weeks Toli and I had several more adventures, meals together, more hours at his desk and the crowing highlight was to be his guest at the November 11th armistice commemoration at the Arc de Triomphe and sitting with him and ancien combattants in the rain as Sarkozy strode past to honor the unknown WWI soldier at the eternal flame. More to come.
Cara - Tuesday

they write murder n'est-ce pas?

On Thursday in Mulhouse, the Alsacation town bordering Germany and close to France, I visited Jen's literature class at the Universite de Haute Alsace. Most of Jen's students are in their second year taking an optional English course. Meaning they've got good English skills and want to stretch their English composition. Jen devoted two class sessions to crime writing giving them the assignment of writing a 'sequel' - in any creative way they wanted - to what Aimée would do after she discovers the body in Murder in the Latin Quarter. Two of the students are reporters on the local Alsace papers but it was fascinating to hear 12 different takes on Aimée's actions. And impressive to realized they wrote several page sequels after just hearing the beginning of a book and that a man's ear had been cut off and his body placed by a circle of salt. The writing piece that stuck out vividly in my mind dealt with Aimée's getting derailed and finding herself in an orgy then saved from being attacked by Bertolt Brecht. Yes, Bertolt Brecht and somehow time travel was involved.
Not to say these young Alsacations are provincial but two of them have never been to Paris. Many live on farms or villages in the surrounding area and the town Mulhouse closes up early. Even if one wanted to find night life, Jen said, people go to bed at 8:00 PM echoing what a woman told me on the tram. It's hard to even find a cafe open. But there's a different rhythm here, people talk to one another and driver's are courteous....never find that in Paris.
I
And then I chatted with this homeless man who walked by the bookstore after my reading - he was trilingual, switiching effortlessly between French German and English. When asked about the war he said 'which one 1877, or the quatorzieme guerre or la guerre de 1939?'
It struck me that this land which has gone from being French then German and back to French refers to the wars by years. I went to the incredible museum at the Hotel de Ville and got more confused after learning Mulhouse hadn't been part of France until Napoleon 'invited' Mulhouse to 'reunite' renaming the main square Place de la Reunion eh voila the explanations got more confusing after that. Here's the door of the Tour de Diable prison and medieval graffti circa 1577 maybe some of Jen's students can get more inspiration here.
Elan's wonderful English bookstore "The Book Corner" is right across from Jen's 17th century apartment and behind the synogogue on rue de la Synogogue near rue des Rabbin's of course. No one explained how this synogogue survived the German re-occupation

But I wonder what they'd think of this street art in Belleville the 20th arrondissement of Paris?


Done by these taggers who spent all morning tagging and are well known in the quartier

Somedays they attract crowds watching them work

At the top the figure's done by a famous tagger - so famous it's considered an honor if he tags your building


Cara - Tuesday