One True Sentence

Author(s): Craig McDonald

Location(s): Paris

Genre(s): Crime, Fiction

Era(s): 1920s

February, 1924: an incredible exchange rate, lack of prohibition and post-war ennui have flooded the City of Light with thousands of Americans — the psychologically damaged members of the so-called Lost Generation. The cafés, bistros and garrets of Paris teem with would-be poets, writers and painters.

Hector Lassiter, fledgling author and best friend of Ernest Hemingway, is crossing the Pont Neuf when he hears a body fall into the icy Seine – the first in a string of brutal murders of literary magazine editors that throw a shroud over the City of Light.

Frantic to stop the killings, the literati form their own improbable vigilante band: Gertrude Stein gathers the most prominent crime and mystery writers in the city, including Hector and the dark, mysterious mystery novelist Brinke Devlin.

Soon, Hector and Brinke are tangled not only under the sheets, but in a web of murders, each more grisly than the next.

From the cafés of Montparnasse, through the historic graveyards of Paris and the Grand Guignol of the Catacombs, “One True Sentence” is an erotic literary thriller and richly sensuous, funhouse mirror that evokes the most romantic and suspenseful appeals of “A Moveable Feast” and “The Dante Club”.

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