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Library | Call Number | Status |
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Searching... McMinnville Public Library | Steiner, P. | Searching... Unknown |
Searching... Silver Falls Library | MYS STEINER | Searching... Unknown |
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Summary
Summary
When political intrigue drove Louis Morgon from a successful career at the State Department, he moved to a cottage in France, far from Washington and what he called "the sordid world." He took up painting. He grew vegetables and flowers. He ate long, lovely meals on the terrace overlooking fields of sunflowers. He thought that he had found happiness.
Then one day Louis's past lands squarely on his doorstep. It does so in the shape of a dead man. His throat has been slit. He wears a cap with liberte embroidered on it. Except for the local cop, Jean Renard, the police are strangely uninterested. This seems peculiar to Renard, but not to Louis. He knows who the murderer is. He also knows that he is likely to be the next victim. And there is very little he or Renard or anyone else can do. Each clue they find raises more questions than it answers. Nothing is as it appears.
Louis's best hope is to turn the tables on his murderer. Instead of knowledge, he has only his intuition and his intelligence. Instead of power or influence, he has only his own past. Louis finds himself on a lonely and dangerous journey of self-discovery. He thought he was beyond surprises. But every turn of the road reveals new mysteries, and the resolution is a shock.
A French Country Murder is a story of political intrigue, corruption and jealousy. It is also a story of love and friendship and, of course, France.
Author Notes
Peter Steiner grew up in Cincinnati. After attending the University of Miami and the Free University of Berlin, he served in the Army in Germany. He got a Ph.D.in German Literature from the University of Pittsburgh and then taught at Dickinson College. He left teaching to pursue a career as a painter and cartoonist. His paintings have been shown in galleries in Washington and New York, and his cartoons appear regularly in The New Yorker, The Weekly Standard, and The Washington Times.
Reviews (3)
Publisher's Weekly Review
Le Carre and Deighton fans will welcome New Yorker cartoonist Steiner's engaging, if enigmatic, first novel, which uses the traditional trappings of the thriller to explore a man's late-life changes. After his unjust dismissal from the CIA, where he was an up-and-coming Middle East policy expert, Louis Morgon finds refuge in rural France. Decades later, someone deposits a corpse with a slit throat on his doorstep. While little mystery surrounds the identity of the prime conspirator, the story, which uses flashbacks and flash-forwards, avoids pat resolutions and does full justice to the complexities of interpersonal relationships. The scenes set in small-town France capture the atmosphere and pace of life there wonderfully. (Mar. 10) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Kirkus Review
One perfect June morning in 1995, Louis Morgon, a State Department analyst retired to the village of Saint Leon sur Dême, opens the door of his chalet to find a dead man on his doorstep. The anonymous corpse is apparently that of an Algerian terrorist whose throat has been slit, yet his unbloodied face is as peaceful as the blue sky overhead. Although the tableau, like the title, suggests a continental cozy à la Peter King, New Yorker cartoonist Steiner's first novel has bigger fish to fry, as Louis's persistent reflections on his meteoric rise and even more precipitate fall in State soon make clear. Recalling his patronage by Hugh Bowes, the brilliant undersecretary on a fast track to even higher office, his sudden smiling betrayal by Bowes, and the decisive final meeting that left both of them speechless, Louis wonders if it's possible that the dead man, for all his elaborately established ties to the Algerian underground, was in fact deposited outside his home at Bowes's orders to pay him back for what the Secretary of State took to be an unforgivable affront. And it isn't simply possible, the investigations he conducts with local gendarme Jean Renard indicate; it's true beyond any doubt, certainly beyond Bowes's pained expressions of hauteur back in Washington. But what to do when you're an inoffensive painter who's made an enemy of one of the most powerful men on earth? Steiner's studied understatement--the unmysterious tale unfolds largely in retrospective summary--renders the stuff of international intrigue into a coolly telegraphic portrait of betrayal. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Library Journal Review
First novelist Steiner places protagonist Louis Morgon in a rather bizarre situation. An ex-CIA agent with two estranged adult children, Morgon has retired to rural France in order to keep his former life secret. When someone dumps a dead African's body on his doorstep, Morgon refuses to help police for that reason, opting instead to investigate this "message" on his own. He begins by methodically searching for clues, questioning his ever-surveillant neighbor, and facing a would-be murderer in a local hotel. An arid, sensible tone marks the narrative, which is a bit short on conversation but inviting nonetheless. (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.