{"id":7895,"date":"2019-04-18T06:26:07","date_gmt":"2019-04-18T10:26:07","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7895"},"modified":"2019-04-18T11:39:17","modified_gmt":"2019-04-18T15:39:17","slug":"the-enduring-allure-of-the-city-of-light","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/?p=7895","title":{"rendered":"The Enduring Allure of the City of Light"},"content":{"rendered":"\n
\"\"<\/figure><\/div>\n\n\n\n

People around the world were stunned and saddened as photographs<\/a> of the partial destruction of the cathedral of Notre Dame, that icon of Paris, burned. (See how laser point clouds<\/a> of gothic cathedrals, which may help in reconstruction, are created.) Paris, its landmarks, its street scenes, and its culture have inspired classic literature from the popular works of Dickens and Victor Hugo (for whom Notre Dame plays a starring role<\/a>) to the American expats in the 1920s to Anthony Doerr. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Crime writers too have found it a congenial home, not\nbecause crime happens there as it does elsewhere, but because to set a crime\nnovel in Paris is to establish a contrast, a friction between the sordidness of\ndeeds and the beauty of the setting, even as it may live only in the reader\u2019s\nimagination. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

The S\u00fbret\u00e9 was quick to adopt some of the early criminal detection\nmeasures developed in France, too: Alphonse Bertillon\u2019s system of identifying\ncriminals through body measurements\u2014a forerunner of today\u2019s biometric\nidentification\u2014and the 1863 discovery by Paul-Jean Coulier of the means to\nreveal fingerprints on paper, roots from which sprang stories of very French\ndetectives, most  notably Georges Simenon\u2019s\nJules Maigret.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The attraction continues. Here are four crime novels from\nthe last year with significant Paris roots. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

****The Long Road\nfrom Paris<\/a> by Kirby Williams \u2013 In the late 1930s, a New Orleans octoroon jazz\nprodigy is making a success of his nightclub with the help of his Jewish\ngirlfriend. Then the fascists appear.  <\/p>\n\n\n\n

****A Long Night\nin Paris<\/a> by Dov Alfon \u2013 an Israeli mistakenly murdered at Charles de Gaulle\nairport triggers a desperate investigation in Paris and Israel to find the real\ntarget. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

*****Paris in the Present Tense<\/a> by Mark Helprin \u2013 A gentlemanly aging cellist plunges well outside his comfort zone to help the people he loves. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

****Number 7, Rue Jacob<\/a> \u2013 by Wendy Hornsby \u2013 A Parisian couple is pursued around Europe in a deadly game, as shadowy persons ask cell phone users to \u201cfind them,\u201d then \u201cstop them.\u201d <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

People around the world were stunned and saddened as photographs of the partial destruction of the cathedral of Notre Dame, that icon of Paris, burned. (See how laser point clouds of gothic cathedrals, which may help in reconstruction, are created.) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":7896,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_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":"The Enduring Allure of the City of Light - authors have loved setting their novels in Paris, and today's crime writers are no exception.","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},"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[52,1288,40,174],"tags":[1553,1320],"class_list":["post-7895","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-crime","category-culture","category-fiction","category-first-draft-blog","tag-notre-dame-cathedral","tag-paris"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/vweisfeld.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/2019\/04\/Notre-Dame-fire.jpg?fit=194%2C259&ssl=1","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2NkiT-23l","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895","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=7895"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7899,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/7895\/revisions\/7899"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/7896"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=7895"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=7895"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vweisfeld.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=7895"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}