Its three months on and much has changed. Eddie’s son Jean-Luc has made his way down France and is currently in The Pyrenees waiting for a guide to take him over the border and the relative safety of Spain. In Paris the German occupation is starting to bite as they are controlling the residents, there is a strict curfew in place, and rationing has been introduced.

Eddie is called in to investigate a murder, a gruesome symbolic one, as the victim is bound to a chair with his lips roughly sewn together with twine. He has been suffocated. The setting is strange one, the victim is in a long-closed jazz club, hardly the place for a known robber to find rich pickings in the safe. It doesn’t follow his usual Modus Operandi either, he’s a roof man, used to entering via skylights, he wouldn’t lower himself to go in through the front door. The oddest thing of all, he should be in prison, Eddie knows this because he put him there, so who has got him out of prison?

It transpires that somebody has managed to get several criminals from across Paris, who have no connections to each other from either working together or in gangs, released. It’s as if someone was building a gang of gangs, a supergroup of the cream of the Paris underworld. But who would have the power to set them free and hope to control them?

Two names come up for Eddie to investigate, Capeluche and Henri Lafont. A bit of digging in the library shows that Capeluche was an executioner in Fifteenth Century Paris, so a suitable nom de guerre for a killer. But who is Henri Lafont?

The plot is the investigation behind this release but there are side issues, the search for the sons of two women and the protection of Jean-Luc who is not yet safe. The pacing is steady but unrelenting, there’s a lot of ground to cover before the reveal and the satisfying finale.

As Eddie is beginning to discover in this war of occupation there is no absolute good and bad, sometimes to survive you must settle best solution you can achieve and live with. With the competing German factions, the Abwehr (intelligence), Wehrmacht (army), Schutzstaffel (SS) and Sicherheitsdienst (SD) and then the dreaded Gestapo in his way his job is near impossible. He may have to humour the Abwehr to avoid supping with the Devil, there is no spoon long enough to work with the Gestapo. All the while there are acts of resistance, collaboration, and the nagging feeling that even some of his colleagues are not to be trusted. Trying to be a moral man under these conditions is near impossible.

Eddie’s character is developing, trying to do right by Jean-Luc he is starting to bury his demons to the extent that he throws the dud bullet away. After a lifetime of letting people down and throwing friendships away Dominique is finally getting him to reflect on past mistakes.

Humour is used sparingly but to great effect. This is no wisecracking smart lipped detective at work, under occupation that would just get you killed. Its much more subtle and all the more cutting for it. There’s a brilliant take down of opera, a German one at that, and it avoids the trope of fat ladies singing. The opera connection is important though. Replacing the wisecracks are Eddie’s observations and great use of similes to express the vulgar.

This is a novel with a great atmospheric feel to it, the unlit streets of the Paris black out, night-time in the graveyard and scrambling around the countryside. Then to top it off there’s a child singing a strange melody who is dogging Eddie but he cannot catch up with him, shades of a Sergio Leone spaghetti western here. Its fabulous Noir, it could almost be a black and white classic of the period, if they were to film it chiaroscuro style would be perfect.

There are real incidents within the fiction which help with the overall feel, there is genuine authenticity about it. In the UK we knew about rationing and privation, particularly during the days of the war in the Atlantic, but we didn’t have the German’s pillaging the countryside for produce. This is brought home in the novel, three months in and produce is being systematically stolen or ‘purchased’ for next to nothing be it food, drink or clothing. Even the lowliest German soldier could participate in this state sanctioned looting. Already the Parisians are suffering hunger, queuing for hours for the scraps left over. There are also hints at the atrocities to come. There’s Eddie’s despair at being pulled out of a food queue when he gets near the front to him going rogue in the countryside, where he cannot help himself. So, an intelligent and largely factual portrayal of life at the beginning of occupation within a framework of an entertaining thriller.

Paris Requiem is a magnificent war time police procedural that evokes a downtrodden and defeated Paris that is almost tangible.

A clever, well plotted and gripping historical noir that kept me in thrall since the first pages.
A solid mys's tery, vivid historical background, a main character who's got the right level of cynism and baggage.
It's the first book I read by this author and just discovered there's another one in this series.
Loved it.
Highly recommended.
Many thanks to the publisher for this arc, all opinions are mine

Detective Eddie Giral is a WWI vet working in 1940 Occupied Paris. He is called to the murder of a man in a closed jazz nightclub. The man's mouth has been sewn shut. Giral knows the man should be in prison, since he sent him there. Turns out numerous criminals are being let out of prison, but by whom and for what purpose? This is a moody historical mystery with a hard-boiled main character full of determination, cynicism and dark humor. I enjoyed it and would read the next in the series.

Eddie Giral is a detective in France during the German occupation and tries to balance what is the correct thing to do whilst managing to survive.

In Paris Requiem, the second book in the series by Chris Lloyd, Giral has to investigate the murder of a criminal who should have still been in prison but who let him out and why.

The author weaves a clever narrative that uses both fact and fiction to propel the story along with all the characters, on both sides, feeling authentic.

This is an excellent series and one deserving of a wider audience

Definitely recommended.

Having enjoyed, ‘The Unwanted Dead,’ the first in this series, I was pleased to read the second in the series. Not much time has passed since readers last met Detective Eddie Giral. We are still in Paris, 1940. After the immediate shock of German occupation, those Parisians who fled are returning to the city. The Germans are still there, the curfew in place, and rationing beginning to bite, but the locals are attempting to ignore them as best as they are able.

Meanwhile, Eddie and another detective, Boniface, are called to a jazz club which was closed by the Germans. They find a minor crook, tied to a chair in the office, with his mouth sewn up. Eddie is nonplussed, not only because of the violence of the death but because the small-time burglar in question should still be in prison. It was clear in the previous book that the Paris police are in control in name only and it seems that they are now putting criminals in prison only to have some of them mysteriously released, but with what intention in mind?

Again, Eddie finds himself coming under the notice of the German, Major Hochstetter and referred to as, ‘his tame German,’ which hurts. Wounded pride aside, though, Eddie Giral does feel the need of Hochstetter’s protection at times in this novel, where he manages to upset various members of the German hierarchy while investigating a murder which sees his estranged son threatened and also involves an old love of his, the singer Dominique, whose son is missing. Dominique is Senegalese and, in this book, Eddie Giral has to face the reality of what German occupation means to the people of Paris and to take sides. This is developing into an excellent series, and I look forward to reading on. I received a copy of this book from the publisher, via NetGalley, for review.

Excellent on quite a few levels! The complex plot is thrilling, scary and convincing. Eddie, the main character, is an efficient policeman, but at what cost!!! Fighting against his own disturbing memories of WWI, Eddie not only has to fight against "conventional" criminals but also the German Abwehr, then the Gestapo as well as the SD and his own boss... Facing many moral, integrity choices, Eddie's professional and personal life gets very complicated indeed! An extremely engrossing novel very hard to put down! I also loved Eddie's way of thinking: full of sarcasm, cynicism, wit and grim humour, depending on the situation. The historical background is well researched and offers some insights I was not aware of... Highly recommended!
I received a complimentary ARC of this novel from NetGalley and I am leaving voluntarily an honest review.

Beautifully judged noir, I really took to Eddie, the protagonist detective. A mix (in my head) of Harry Bosch and Sam Spade, but with more emotional complexity, I read this in one long night. Delighted to read in the acknowledgements that there will be more Eddie novels in the pipeline, and I need to get the precursor to this one to make sure I have the story from the start. Recommended.