A Scent of Murder by Elizabeth Howard Series: My Name is Paris #3
Published by ibooks, Random House Books on March 27, 2019
Genres: Young Adult Fiction / Girls & Women, Young Adult Fiction / Historical / Europe, Young Adult Fiction / Mysteries & Detective Stories
Pages: 130
Format: Paperback
Source: Ebay
Buy on Amazon/Buy on Barnes & Noble
Goodreads
Meet PARIS Paris Mackenzie is a sixteen-year-old from Chicago with an irrepressible personality and a passion for Sherlock Holmes. When she visits her namesake city at the turn of the century, Paris finds all the glamour and romance she ever dreamed of. But the city’s glittering façade hides a dark underside, whose danger is like a magnet to the intrepid Paris, pulling her closer and closer to treachery, deceit. . . and even murder. A SCENT OF MURDER World-famous artist Claude Monet has invited Paris and Marcel to visit him in the tranquil French countryside at Giverny. But the waters of Monet’s private pond are distinctly troubled when a dead man is found floating amid the lilies. Only Paris believes it is more than an accident. Before long her persistence uncovers a wicked web of duplicity, fraud, and murder threatening one of the world’s greatest artists.
The “My Name is Paris” book series is one that I remember seeing at the public library when I was a child. I never got to read it. I loved the cover and thought I may enjoy the series. As an adult, somehow I remember that it existed. When I remembered that it existed, I decided to go to Ebay and purchased the four published books. Goodreads acts like there are 6 books, but there were series, like this one, where some books in a series never saw the light of day. I am reading only those that appeared to have actually been published and not trying to hunt down the author or some other copy of the book. It was time to mark off this series from the list of “want to read” to “I read it” regardless of how I end up feeling about the overall series. Sometimes the goal is to accomplish the thing. I want to continue reading these older series.
I can’t help comparing this to the other two titles in the series. The first one was meh and the second one was meh in a different way. The second one had the same theme of a real person from the real world being utilized as a character, which is something I personally am just not a huge fan of in fiction books. I like my fiction to be fictionalized, sorry. The second book of the series actually made me roll my eyes a lot because of this added element, but this third book I was a little more okay with. It felt a bit better balanced as the characters were utilized, I felt, in stronger ways to drive plot forward. This made me feel like this was a far superior book than the second book.
The plot here also felt more like a murder mystery. The second did not feel like a mystery to me, the first did. This one was very squarely a murder mystery. We read a character dying on the pages early on and Paris starts to investigate almost immediately. It took me a bit to read this one because initially the plot made me think too much of that second book, but once I got to reading this one night I found myself actually engaged with it and finding myself not being able to put it down. This was partially because I wanted to get through it, I will admit. It, however, was also because I could see that this was being done differently. I had questions throughout on who committed the murder, but it started being very obvious based on who was in the cast of characters. I normally would mind feeling like it was an obvious killer, but I think with the recent Hallmark cheesiness that I have been watching I didn’t mind this like I normally would. In fact, I found it a bit refreshing based on what had occurred with the other two books. Again, this felt like a murder mystery, especially in comparison with the other two books in the series. This is the one I would challenge readers to get to, as based on the three books this is probably the best of the three. We will see if that holds up with the last book in the series (mentioned below in the OTHER INFO section of this post).
There is ONE more book to read in the series that was published. ONLY ONE MORE!!! Once I read this, I have accomplished finishing a series I have wanted to read since I was a child. I wonder what older series I will go to next?
Leave a Reply