As nuanced as a dry martini and as evocative as Proust’s madeleine, Joseph Goodrich’s The Paris Manuscript explores the intersection of art, passion, and deception with perceptive elegance. Ned is an old man, who has reluctantly agreed to move in with his daughter’s family. As he begins to clean out his own home, he discovers a pair of opera gloves, which evoke memories of a murder mystery that once threatened to destroy his relationship with his beloved wife, Daisy.
The result is a remarkable triumph that is at once a meticulous recreation of the louche glories of 1920s Paris, a fair and intriguing murder mystery, and an exploration of Proust’s claim that:
We know that each murderer, individually, imagines that he has arranged everything so cleverly that he will not be caught, but in general, murderers are almost always caught. Liars, on the contrary, are rarely caught, and, among liars, more particularly the woman with whom we are in love.
The Paris Manuscript is not to missed by any fan of Golden Age mysteries, Marcel Proust, or first-rate literary fiction.