Paris Night

Paris Night is the novel which foretold the invasion of Ukraine by Russia (see Extracts, www.roderickdentrac.com). It is the thriller which provides a codebook for understanding the unending avalanche of scandals in France, and the moral and institutional crisis in the country which has become a focus of national debate since the book was published. One of the latest and biggest scandals, of how an eminence grise behind Nicolas Sarkozy when he was president, secretly tape-recorded the president in the Elysee so as to have an insurance policy, walks straight out of the pages of Paris Night. The book, written before the downfall over a sex scandal of Strauss-Kahn, the head of the IMF destined to be president of France, explores how corruption can cause slow rot and put a nation in danger. The man who took the Elysee in his place, Francois Hollande, warns that the moral crisis now shaking France puts the Republic in peril. Paris Night is a thriller and also a comment on decadence and the need for people with courage to fight for high principles. The plot, and the characters, are powered by betrayal, murder, revenge, redemption, money, sex, hatred and love in a long, hot summer. A terrorist conspiracy, with roots in Iran and the Middle East and North Africa, threatens the United States and Europe from without; decades of dirty deeds threaten France from within. Enter Titus Mallory, an expert on risk management, with roots in Massachusetts, a life in Europe and danger at his back. And Delphine, the lawyer with a double life, executive by day and femme fatale by night; and Leila the student with dangerous secrets and a fatal mission. They are about to encounter the forces of darkness: Kir, a young woman scarred by gang rape, driven by sex and sworn to terror; and the Lizard…the perfect assassin. From the murder of an agent in New York to decadence in France emerges a putrid world of shadows without light. The reader is taken on a deadly voyage from the New to the Old world, through the sounds and smells of bistros, cafés, cobbled streets and vineyards. Paris Night, ten years in the making, is a thriller of action and suspense: it is also an elegantly written investigation of the France the tourist never sees (except through astonishing news headlines about sex and scandals which would stretch belief in fiction).