{"id":7278,"date":"2018-05-30T07:15:04","date_gmt":"2018-05-30T11:15:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7278"},"modified":"2018-05-30T07:15:04","modified_gmt":"2018-05-30T11:15:04","slug":"number-7-rue-jacob","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7278","title":{"rendered":"****Number 7, Rue Jacob"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"cell

photo: rocksee, creative commons license<\/p><\/div>\n

By Wendy Hornsby \u2013Maggie MacGowen is an almost-forty-year-old American, dedicated to her documentary filmmaking career and engaged to delightful Frenchman Jean-Paul Bernard, about a decade her senior. Though he says his job is \u201cin business,\u201d she realizes it is something far more consequential and lets him keep his secrets.<\/p>\n

She\u2019s in Paris to rendezvous with him and look for some documentary film work there, as they plan to marry. She\u2019ll stay at number 7, rue Jacob, in a flat inherited from her biological mother, a Frenchwoman she never really knew. After her mother died, she learned she has a half-brother, a grandmother, an uncle, and nephews in France, still practically strangers.<\/p>\n

Her inheritance isn\u2019t just the flat. Maggie and Jean-Paul now own all three buildings of a former convent, including a mysterious basement library. Many people want the library\u2019s contents, including officials from the diocese, the Vatican, and the Louvre, whom Maggie\u2019s mother believed should have the religious books. The library also contains a number of illuminated manuscripts created for 17th c. Russian regent Sofia Alekseyevna. These are of almost inestimable value, since most such treasures were destroyed during the Revolution.<\/p>\n

Almost before Maggie can unpack, Jean-Paul sends an urgent summons and a request for her to meet him in Italy. She follows his ominous instructions\u2014burner phones only, cash, no credit cards\u2014to the letter. When she finds Jean-Paul, he\u2019s been injured. A drone dropped a bomb in front of his vehicle. This is an exciting set-up for the cat-and-mouse game that takes the pair from Venice to Ravenna and across Italy.<\/p>\n

Hornsby\u2019s novel is a cautionary tale about how easily people\u2019s location can be tracked these days. First, a simple tracking device was attached to Maggie\u2019s coat. Then someone uses social media to broadcast a call to \u201cfind this couple!\u201d Photos of them are posted by dozens of casual passersby, as if Maggie and Jean-Paul are targets in some terrifying Pokemon Go universe.<\/p>\n

The instructions change from \u201cfind them\u201d to \u201cstop them\u201d with a reward attached, and the risk goes through the roof. Anyone with a cell phone can potentially expose them. Whether all the technology can be used exactly as Hornsby uses it here, the story bears the stamp of \u201cOh yeah, I can believe some idiot would try that.\u201d<\/p>\n

But what do their pursuers want? Are they after Maggie, with her film expos\u00e9 about unexploded landmines? Or is Jean-Paul the real target? Or is it 7 rue Jacob itself, and its hidden library of precious illuminated texts? My questions about the initial attacks on Jean-Paul weren\u2019t ever satisfactorily answered, but in the thrill of the chase, I set them aside. Again, though, the motivation is weak.<\/p>\n

From the streets of Paris to the canals of Venice, to the several other locales in this story takes, Hornsby establishes an alluring sense of place. She has a clear writing style and creates significant tension around the threat to Maggie and Jean-Paul, as well as a warm and sexy relationship between them. At the same time, she pays attention to the ties to Maggie\u2019s new French family that complicate whatever she decides about her unexpected, many-strings-attached inheritance.
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By Wendy Hornsby \u2013Maggie MacGowen is an almost-forty-year-old American, dedicated to her documentary filmmaking career and engaged to delightful Frenchman Jean-Paul Bernard, about a decade her senior. Though he says his job is \u201cin business,\u201d she realizes it is something … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"****Number 7, Rue Jacob - in this thriller's modern version of the \"car chase,\" a hacker doesn't need to stir from his chair. Let social media do it!","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,40,126,256,186,32],"tags":[412,1319,1320,1318],"class_list":["post-7278","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-crime","category-fiction","category-reading-2","category-social-media-2","category-technology","category-thriller","tag-mystery","tag-number-7-rue-jacob","tag-paris","tag-wendy-hornsby"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-1To","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7278","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=7278"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7278\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7280,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7278\/revisions\/7280"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7278"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7278"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7278"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}