Missing Italian Girl

December 17, 2012
Pope’s engaging third mystery featuring magistrate Bernard Martin (after 2011’s The Blood of Lorraine) shines a light on both the glamor and the grime of late-19th-century Paris. Two Italian sisters who have grown up in a Paris slum, 17-year-old Maura and 18-year-old Angela Laurenzano, enlist the aid of accused Russian anarchist, Pyotr Ivanovich, in disposing of the body of Angela’s abusive seducer in a canal. After Pyotr disappears, they fear that the police will charge them with murder. When the sisters themselves go missing, Francesca—Maura and Angela’s charwoman mother—turns to Clarie, Bernard’s wife, for assistance. Clarie, who is used to her genteel life as a teacher, must confront a bewildering world of revolutionaries and radicals, of the desperate and the devious. While the plot flounders at points, Clarie’s struggle to balance her role as a bourgeois wife and mother against her investigative instincts will entice readers. Agent: Mollie Glick, Foundry Literary + Media.

December 1, 2012
An unlikely sleuth is drawn into another murder mystery in turn-of-the-century France. On June 24, 1897, Maura and Angela, a pair of teenagers, help a Russian named Pyotr Ivanovich Balenov transport a corpse on a cart to a river just outside Paris, where they dump it. Now far away, hardworking teacher Clarie Martin rushes home after a tiring day, her only wish to spend time with her children and beloved husband, Bernard. But Francesca, an Italian charwoman at her school, buttonholes Clarie with a colorful and emotional tale about Francesca's daughter Angela, who's been "taken away" by an unsavory man who's promised to marry her. Can Clarie help? At home, Bernard greets her with the news that he has finally secured a salaried job, and the couple goes out to celebrate for the first time since moving to Paris. But the plight of the "Italian girls" continues to bother Clarie, who's lost a child and feels Francesca's anguish. As the girls toil away in a shirtwaist factory, the sudden disappearance of Pyotr and a suspicious bombing worry Angela and Maura immensely, and the arrival of a police inspector with questions about Barbereau, the dead man on the cart, push them to the brink. When Clarie receives a letter notifying her that Francesca won't be reporting for work since Angela has been killed, she knows what she must do. Pope's third mystery featuring Clarie (The Blood of Lorraine, 2010, etc.) expertly doles out pieces of its complex plot, a picaresque puzzle with satisfying period flavor.

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February 1, 2013

Pope's third series historical (after Cezanne's Quarry and The Blood of Lorraine) opens at night with three people hauling a man's corpse through deserted streets: Marcel Barbereau was dead as a doornail in 1897 Paris. Moments after swinging the body into a remote canal, the murderer, a Russian anarchist named Pyotr, and two Italian sisters, Angela and Maura, are confronted by a fellow anarchist. After a short, friendly chat, the three split up to avoid detection, but they are far from safe. Someone has decided to take "justice" into his or her own hands. Magistrate Bernard Martin's wife, Claire, yields to the girls' mother's pleas to help her daughters, but she might not be able to save herself from this killer. VERDICT Pope's absorbing, detailed mystery provides an eye-opening look at the class struggles of the working poor in fin de siecle France. Historical mystery buffs, especially fans of Elizabeth Peters and Anne Perry, will enjoy Bernard and Claire's adventures.--Susan Moritz, Silver Spring, MD

Copyright 2013 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

January 1, 2013
Pope writes deeply atmospheric historical novels starring nineteenth-century French magistrate Bernard Martin and his teacher wife, Clarie. The settings, so far, have moved through different parts of France; Pope's first novel, Cezanne's Quarry (2008), was set in Aix-en-Provence, and her second, The Blood of Lorraine (2011), featured the town of Nancy in Lorraine. In the latest, Pope moves through the dark side of fin de si'cle Paris. A charwoman at the exclusive young women's 'cole in which Clarie teaches sets the plot in motion when she begs Clarie to have her husband look into the disappearance of the charwoman's daughter. The investigation uncovers the abuse and trafficking of poor young women, anarchist plots, and murder. The musings of Clarie about the wrenching inequity between the pampered women she teaches and those she and Bernard search for in back alleys give us a window into this glamorous yet perilous time. Engrossing.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)