A French Country Murder: A Novel
About this ebook
"Le Carre and Deighton fans will welcome New Yorker cartoonist Steiner's engaging . . .first novel." — Publishers Weekly
When political intrigue drove Louis Morgon from a successful career at the State Department, he moved to a cottage in France, far from Washington and what he called "the sordid world." He took up painting. He grew vegetables and flowers. He ate long, lovely meals on the terrace overlooking fields of sunflowers. He thought that he had found happiness.
Then one day Louis's past lands squarely on his doorstep. It does so in the shape of a dead man. His throat has been slit. He wears a cap with " liberte" embroidered on it. Except for the local cop, Jean Renard, the police are strangely uninterested. This seems peculiar to Renard, but not to Louis. He knows who the murderer is. He also knows that he is likely to be the next victim. And there is very little he or Renard or anyone else can do. Each clue they find raises more questions than it answers. Nothing is as it appears.
Louis's best hope is to turn the tables on his murderer. Instead of knowledge, he has only his intuition and his intelligence. Instead of power or influence, he has only his own past. Louis finds himself on a lonely and dangerous journey of self-discovery. He thought he was beyond surprises. But every turn of the road reveals new mysteries, and the resolution is a shock.
"A beautiful crime novel." —Thomas Perry, Edgar Award–winning author of The Butcher's Boy
"A terrific, engrossing novel about love, friendship, betrayal, and trust." —Roz Chast, cartoonist for The New Yorker
"A wonderful novel—keen-eyed, circumspect, patient and wise. . . . A French Country Murder est superbe —as a study of a man whose choices haunt him and as a quietly thrilling mystery." —Jim Fusilli, author of Closing Time and A Well-Known Secret
"An unforgettable tale of mystery, madness and romance. . . . It can only be hoped that this novel will receive the attention, respect and success it so deserves in order to encourage Steiner to tread further into the waters of fiction. Very highly recommended." —Bookreporter.com
About the author
Peter Steiner grew up in Cincinnati. After attending the University of Miami and the Free University of Berlin, he served in the Army in Germany. He got a Ph.D.in German Literature from the University of Pittsburgh and then taught at Dickinson College. He left teaching to pursue a career as a painter and cartoonist. His paintings have been shown in galleries in Washington and New York, and his cartoons appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Weekly Standard, and The Washington Times.
