Silly little book.

Rachel Levis finds a dead body in the men's room of a café. Ten days later the police ask Rachel - who has some experience solving a murder - to go undercover at the place of work of the dead man. Apparently, his former colleagues all disliked the man, but they are not saying why and the police can't make them.

So Rachel goes undercover and finds out why the dead man was disliked. But is no closer to finding out who did it, when two weeks later there is another murder. Rachel is then asked to sit in on the witness interviews because two may hear more than one. If that wasn't eye-rolling enough, the police tells each of the witnesses to not leave Paris. Seriously? Even a person that is formally considered a suspect and is placed under court supervision can go anywhere except leave France, but a person that can barely be considered a witness can't even leave town?

In the acknowledgements Emilia Bernhard mentions a few books that helped her get law details right. I think she forgot to research whether a French police capitaine has the same stature as a Wild West sheriff.

Anyway, the witnesses who are foreigners are all suspects, but for some reason, the French nationals that were present near the stacks at the time the second murder happened are not. I know French people are nationalistic, but this is silly. Neither the author nor the amateur sleuth is French so what is with this preoccupation to investigate the Brits and the American?

Rachel and her friend Magda stumble through the investigation. They do a lot of silly things and make silly assumptions. They are corrected when they do, or at least called out on it. This doesn't really stop them doing their investigations. And while usually I think it is stupid for the murderer to come after the sleuth (as often that is the one thing that gives them away), in this story I was actually looking forward for the murderer to come after Rachel and give her a good scare or knock some sense into her.

I read an ARC through Netgalley.