Our Rating 5⭐s
You can buy Banquet of Beggars...Here You can find out about the author...Here
In Paris 1940, survival means sacrifice. Like most in the city, Detective Eddie Giral has already lost so much under Occupation: the people he once loved, the job he once believed in.
And his latest investigation into the murder of a black-marketeer has made it clearer than ever: Eddie is no longer just catching criminals. He's working for them. Because when a German trader is the next to die, the authorities decide it's innocent civilians who will pay the price - unless Eddie can find the killer in time.
As hunger grows, tensions rise and a fierce rebellion brews, Eddie will tread a dark path between doing whatever it takes to live with the enemy... and also with himself.
This is the third in Chris Lloyd's "Occupation series" following The Unwanted Dead and Paris Requiem. Reviews for these two novels can also be found on this blog. All feature the anti hero Eddie who I have previously labelled "a tough, vulnerable, relentless, thug of an honest cop." And yes he is still all those things and yes he is still played by a French Bob Hoskins in my head. I am running out of superlatives for this series. I religiously follow only 2 series of books and the Occupation series is the only I have given 5 stars for every review.
Again its a murder mystery set in occupied Paris in 1940/41, but this time the investigation follows the murder of a local black marketeer who has been profiting at the misery of the starving citizens of Paris. Later another murder is committed linked to the Black Market. There are numerous plot twists and turns before Eddie can work out who the killers are. If the whodunnit plot were to be lifted from this novel and placed in a modern setting then it would still be a very good if not excellent mystery but the absolute beauty (and genius) of this book and the others is the setting.
Eddie is a good cop with a good heart but he is a bad man. . His situation is finely balanced like an elephant on a see saw. The crooks hate him because he is a cop, the citizens hate him because they think he is a collaborator, The Wehrmacht hate him because he may be resistance and the Gestapo hate him because well just because he's not a Nazi. The old joke springs to mind... It's not paranoia, if they really are out to get you, and the situation he finds himself in is akin to a paranoid's fever dream.
I feel I must give special mention to the first chapter mini spoiler alert coming. but not really a big one as its only about the first chapter. Act 1 Scene 1 Eddie wakes up in a sweaty underground room, parched and exhausted. He licks moisture of the walls.... Immediately the reader thinks prison cell. As the scene unfolds french people are encamped with him, the reader switches to thinking air raid shelter. Eventually it becomes clear the reason why he is there is something very different. The author cunningly guides us through this mini mystery tour with just descriptions of thoughts and feelings till you get a feeling of waking up somewhere where you cant remember from the night before. It's a very carefully thought out false trail, he intentionally gives us mental breadcrumbs to follow to lead us into the assumptions of "Oh he is in a prison cell." quickly followed by "Oh he is in an air raid shelter." The author knows what he is doing in planting the thoughts in our minds. False trails., obfuscation and frustration, he sets the tone right at the start of the book Wonderful example of an opening chapter.
Again the authors research is amazing. Actual dates, timings, events, processes, of occupied Paris, these are the things that he is good at. These are our black and white lines and the colour is added through Eddie and his emotions and thoughts through out his adventures. It is every bit a spellbinding mixture as Hilary Mantel's Wolf Hall, it's just that the era and country are different.
The feeling of oppression and never ending stress living under the constant pressure of an institutionally psychopathic regime makes for a teeth clenching, heart pounding read. I have mentioned before how Eddie is like a 1920s LA noir detective but thrust into an alien backdrop of occupied Paris. The narrative also reminds of Orwell's authoritarian hell-scape of 1894. The terror of saying the wrong thing, of thinking the wrong thing, of being the wrong colour or just being in the wrong place. How could you conduct an honest murder investigation in this world. An Eddie type would be your only hope.
Of course occupied 1940s Paris, or Orwell's 1984 aren't the only fascist games in town. Trump's USA is coming to the boil and it is terrifying. I'm off to buy some guinea pigs ready for the incoming world collapse and subsequent right wing terror. Oh guinea pigs? You'll have to read Banquet for Beggars. I promise you will never look at a guinea-pig in the same way again.
Another great book in a great series.
"If they cut the meat allowance any further, I might even become fashionable.""Butter was the new cocaine."
"you know my boys Eddie. They wouldn't hurt a fly." "I know they wouldn't." She backed away to close the door. They'd be too fucking stupid stupid to hit it."
"This is not how we do things Judge." "This is how we do things now. This is an opportunity for France. A chance to sweep away the old." "You mean things like justice and law?" "Wasters and hopeless people. The ones who offer nothing and take everything." "I've got a few names for you."
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The Gathering Storm by Alan Jones. (our review..here)
Chris was born in an ambulance racing through a town he’s only returned to once, which probably explains a lot.Straight after graduating in Spanish and French, he hopped on a bus from Cardiff to Catalonia where he stayed for the next twenty-odd years, first in the small and beautiful city of Girona, then in the big and beautiful city of Barcelona. He’s also lived in Bilbao, pre-empting the Guggenheim by a good few years, and in Madrid, where his love of Barcelona football club deepened. During this time, he worked as a teacher, in educational publishing, as a travel writer and as a translator. He still spends part of his day translating lofty and noble academic and arts texts.
Besides this, he also lived in Grenoble for six months, where he studied the French Resistance movement, a far deeper and more complex subject than history often teaches us and one that has fascinated him for years.
He now lives in his native Wales, where he writes crime novels and translates stuff.
The result of his lifelong interest in World War 2 and resistance and collaboration in Occupied France, The Unwanted Dead (Orion) is Chris’s first novel set in Paris, featuring Detective Eddie Giral. The series will see Eddie negotiate his way through the Occupation, trying to find a path between resistance and collaboration, all the time becoming whoever he must be to survive the ordeal descended on his home.
He also writes the Elisenda Domenech series (Canelo) set in Girona, featuring a police officer in the devolved Catalan police force. The head of an experimental Serious Crime Unit, she fights the worst of human excesses in the most beautiful of settings.
When he’s not writing or trying to keep up with his reading pile, Chris loves travelling, languages, red wine, Wales and Barça at football, Wales at rugby, cryptic crosswords, art, rock music and losing himself in European cities.
He’s especially proud to be a member of the Welsh crime writing collective Crime Cymru, the Crime Writers’ Association and the Society of Authors.
Steve Cavanagh is an Irish author from Belfast and at the age eighteen he studied law by mistake. He is now the international award-winning author of the Eddie Flynn novels. His debut novel, The Defense, was nominated for the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award for Thriller of the Year, and The Plea won the Prix Polar Award for Best International Novel. Steve is still a practicing lawyer (someday he’ll get the hang of it) and co-host ofthe chart-topping podcast Two Crime Writers And A Microphone. He has been involved in several high-profile civil rights cases, his Eddie Flynn novels have been published in over twenty countries, he’s married with two young children, and in his spare time he is mostly asleep.
