PRAISE FOR PABLO DE SANTIS’S

The
Paris Enigma

“Luminous … a tightly spun thriller…. Mr. De Santis effortlessly incorporates important historical events—the building of the tower and the World’s Fair—into his narrative, as well as capturing the turn-of-the-century uneasiness over the emergence of the machine age.”

— Wall Street Journal

“A beguiling historical whodunit.”

—New York Times Book Review

“A consummate crime writer…. A sophisticated whodunit.”

—Daily News (New York)

“Entertaining…. Musings on the art of detecting provide many of the book’s most memorable passages.”

—Time Out (New York)

“Discriminating general readers as well as whodunit fans will enjoy this outstanding puzzler, winner of the first Casa de América de Narrativa Prize for Best Latin American Novel…. De Santis adroitly explores such issues as the difference between image and reality while providing intelligent and entertaining discussions of alternate approaches to detection.”

—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“A complex whodunit that provokes thought as well as entertainment, on subjects from waterproof shoeshine cream to ancient Greek physics. It fires multiple, intense bursts of crime stories at the reader, some only a page or so long. And it climaxes with serial murders that tie into the building of the Eiffel Tower and the Paris World’s Fair of 1889.”

—Associated Press

“Against the backdrop of the 1889 World’s Fair, detective’s assistant Sigmundo Salvatrio travels to Paris in his master’s stead for a mysterious (natch) gathering of a collective known as the Twelve Detectives. Murder and mayhem ensue…. Colorful characters and cases create a hazy atmosphere of intelligent escapism. The real subject of the book is the mysterious, melancholic birth of modernity.”

— Washington Post