Ghosts of Saint-Michel

Lamar's second novel set in Paris's 18th arrondissement (after 2003's Rendezvous Eighteenth) may put off some readers with its suggestion that forces in the U.S. government, who wanted to wake the country up with a second Pearl Harbor, allowed the 9/11 attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon. The broader terrorist plot is an awkward graft onto the story of Marva Dobbs, a 62-year-old African-American woman who runs a successful Paris soul food restaurant. Marva's active libido leads her into a relationship with a new cook, 28-year-old Algerian Hassan Mekachera, but Hassan disappears after a bombing and becomes a suspect. When Marva herself vanishes, her daughter, Naima, and her Breton husband, Loïc Rose, begin a quest to find her. More rewarding than the thriller aspect is Lamar's insider view of American expatriates in contemporary Paris.