After three virtuoso performances, Ted Mooney delivers a career-defining novel about expats living lives on the fly in Paris.
When Odile, a French clothing designer, agrees to help smuggle Communist folk art out of the former Soviet Union, she bargains only on cash payment and a few days' inconvenience. But by the time she returns home and delivers the contraband to Turner, the scheme's mastermind, her fellow courier has disappeared in transit, her apartment has been ransacked, and she has set in motion events that will endanger everyone she holds dear.
Meanwhile, Odile's unwitting American husband, Max, discovers mysterious pirated copies of his first movie with a fraudulent alternate ending. Soon he is brushing up against the Russian mafia as he films close friends, a Dutchman and a young American, busy restoring their houseboat on the Seine - an endeavor increasingly vital to both Max and his subjects. And Turner's own Russian complications begin to seem strangely akin to those encountered by Max, who by now suspects Odile of having an affair.
Deceptions widen and events converge in this ingeniously constructed page-turner that poses hard questions about inevitability and fate - and returns an acclaimed author to the front rank of American fiction.
Genre: Mystery
When Odile, a French clothing designer, agrees to help smuggle Communist folk art out of the former Soviet Union, she bargains only on cash payment and a few days' inconvenience. But by the time she returns home and delivers the contraband to Turner, the scheme's mastermind, her fellow courier has disappeared in transit, her apartment has been ransacked, and she has set in motion events that will endanger everyone she holds dear.
Meanwhile, Odile's unwitting American husband, Max, discovers mysterious pirated copies of his first movie with a fraudulent alternate ending. Soon he is brushing up against the Russian mafia as he films close friends, a Dutchman and a young American, busy restoring their houseboat on the Seine - an endeavor increasingly vital to both Max and his subjects. And Turner's own Russian complications begin to seem strangely akin to those encountered by Max, who by now suspects Odile of having an affair.
Deceptions widen and events converge in this ingeniously constructed page-turner that poses hard questions about inevitability and fate - and returns an acclaimed author to the front rank of American fiction.
Genre: Mystery
Visitors also looked at these books
Used availability for Ted Mooney's The Same River Twice