Paris Requiem: From the Winner of the HWA Gold Crown for Best Historical Fiction

(Paperback)

Available Formats

---

Publishing Details

Classifications

Physical Properties

Description

'In Detective Eddie Giral, Chris Lloyd has created a flawed hero not just for occupied Paris, but for our own times, too' KATHERINE STANSFIELD

Paris, 1940. As the city adjusts to life under Nazi occupation, Detective Eddie Giral struggles to reconcile his job as a policeman with his new role enforcing a regime he cannot believe in but must work under.

He's sacrificed so much in order to survive in this new world, but the past is not so easily forgotten. When an old friend and an old flame reappear, begging for his help, Eddie must decide how far he will go to help those he loves.

He can remain a good man and do nothing, or risk it all in a desperate act of resistance...

Praise for Chris Lloyd and Detective Eddie Giral

'Terrific' SUNDAY TIMES

'Gripping... a vivid recreation of Paris under German Occupation' ANDREW TAYLOR

'A thoughtful, haunting thriller' MICK HERRON

'Sharp and compelling' THE SUN

Reviews

A corpse is discovered in a derelict jazz club, its lips sewn tight with twine. The victim, Eddie finds out, is an old lag who should be in prison. After he learns that other criminals are also out on the streets, given early release in mysterious circumstances, he realises that he has stumbled on a conspiracy involving French criminals and German occupiers. A page-turning, morally complex thriller. (Best Historical Fiction Books of 2023) * SUNDAY TIMES *
Chris Lloyd follows up the excellent The Unwanted Dead with another terrific slice of historical noir. In his vivid recreation of Paris under German occupation, French policeman Eddie Giral - trapped between Nazis, gangsters and his own conscience - finds himself morally compromised following the discovery of several mutilated bodies. Once again, the prose sparkles with Lloyd's mordant wit and gallows humour, illuminating the depravity of an evil regime. * VASEEM KHAN *
Lloyd does a masterly job of conjuring a hungry, defeated Paris. Eddie is a convincing protagonist; a flawed man trying his best to be a good one. * THE TIMES *
It's the book Raymond Chandler might have written if he had lived and breathed the Nazi Occupation of Paris... Paris Requiem is more than a historical crime novel, it's a tour de force. To read it is to have lived in occupied Paris, to have experienced its many-layered devastation. But to read it is also to have walked, in Eddie Giral's skin, through the decisions and betrayals, the compromises and dubious triumphs of an investigation which should, by rights, have killed him. * ALIS HAWKINS *
A haunting and eye-opening portrayal of life under occupation. * ADELE PARKS *

Author Bio

Straight after graduating in Spanish and French, Chris Lloyd hopped on a bus from Cardiff to Catalonia and stayed there for over twenty years. He has also lived in Grenoble - researching the French Resistance movement - as well as in the Basque Country and Madrid, where he taught English and worked in educational publishing and as a travel writer. He now lives in South Wales and is a translator and novelist.

Paris Requiem is his second novel set in Paris, featuring Detective Eddie Giral. The first, The Unwanted Dead, won the Historical Writers' Association Gold Crown Award for best historical novel of the year, and was shortlisted for the Crime Writers' Association Historical Dagger Award.