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Rage in Paris
Kirby Williams

Pushcart Press
December 1, 2014/ ISBN 978-1888889765
Fiction / 1930s Paris

Reviewed by Linda Morelli

 

Rage in Paris, a first time novel by Paris-based American Kirby Williams, throws us into a vibrant Paris of the mid-1930’s from the point of view of a black expat private eye Urby Brown. Having left the United States because of racial discrimination, Urby struggles to be financially independent first as a musician, then as a private eye. It is through these two professions that we are introduced to a world of ordinary expat Black Americans rarely described except for contemporary black celebrities such as Josephine Baker.

Urby is hired to investigate the kidnapping of a wealthy American’s daughter. Although ostensibly a detective story, we move about Paris and Germany as Urby works to solve the kidnapping. It is ultimately a journey for him to discover whom he can and can't trust.

The Paris Williams describes is not quite the romantic Paris often depicted in novels of that era - it’s February and cold, dark and seething with intrigue. Williams provides a lot of details on various Parisian venues that are somewhat distracting and the book occasionally reads like a travel log. However, Williams has also created a world of believable characters a heady mix of struggling musicians, gangsters, French Fascists, American expats and eccentric wealthy Yankees tossed neatly together with French political tensions due to the growing fascist movement.

I found it interesting that Williams chose this period and not the post-WWII era. On one hand, Urby Brown left the US in the early 1900’s for greater freedom but, as the story ends, finds himself facing the verge of France’s and Europe’s hellish descent into Nazi domination with its oppressive racial policies. We readers know what Urby does not – that these policies are a precursor to a descent into hell for many races.

Reviewer Linda Morelli is the award winning author of three published romance novels.
Reviewed 2014
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