A solid mystery in a very cool setting.

This series of mysteries take place in Paris and are really entertaining to read. The main character is so likable and the mysteries to solve are convoluted and keep you thinking.

Hugo watches as his friend Max is kidnapped right in front of him. As an ex-FBI agent and now the head of security for the US Embassy in Paris, Hugo begins to investigate who has taken Max and how to bring them to justice, since the police seem uninterested. Hugo digs into Max's past and finds unexpected clues and interesting facts about this man he's known for years.

I don't know that I would have picked this book up without it being for my book club. And I would have missed out on a good book. It's got all the needs for a mystery. Intrigue, romance, murder, drugs, history, and an awesome setting for it all to happen. The characters could be more fleshed out, but the plot kept the pages turning and kept my interest up until the end, even though I guessed what would happen before it did.

Still, I'm curious what the rest of Hugo's adventures will entail.

Very standard storyline. Learning a bit about the bouqinistes was entertaining, otherwise, Hugo is not developed terribly well. None of the other characters are really multi-dimensional either.

Great mystery. The author pulls you into the story, settings, and characters immediately and keeps you interested throughout the novel. I was unaware of the role of the bouquinistes in Paris; this story centers around one named Max and the rare books he sells. I look forward to reading more about the recurring characters in the next novel.

“If peace had a smell, he thought, it would be the smell of a library full of old, leather-bound books.”
Mystery, intrigue, and learning about the bouquinistes of Paris...a darn good listen.

Imagine a Venn diagram, with the following circles: private eye story, spy novel, cerebral mystery and police procedural.

The area where all those circles intersect is where you would find "The Bookseller," by Mark Pryor. Set in Paris, the novel offers intrigue with a smattering of action, and veers through all those Venn circles mentioned above.

Pryor's protagonist, Hugo Marston, is not a private eye, nor is he a wisecracking anti-authoritarian as so many fictional PI's are. He's head of security at the U.S. embassy in Paris, and tries to do things by the book. But when his friend, a seller of books with a stall by the river, in kidnapped, Marston finds himself using his vacation time to investigate a crime the local authorities do not seem much interested in. In that respect, to start off, Marston is a bit of a lone wolf, poking his nose into business and irritating authorities, and the book reads like a detective novel.

But those other Venn circles come into play soon enough. Before he became an embassy security cop, Marston was a profiler for the FBI. The author, an assistant district attorney, describes past interviews with murder suspects, drug task forces and the clues hiding within an autopsy report with the authority of someone who has dealt with such matters -- hence, the police procedural vibe.

And while Hugo Marston, the by-the-book Texan, concerns himself with the ramifications of illegal searches and pissing off political powers, his CIA agent buddy Tom Green does not have those compunctions. Tom is the foul-mouthed smartass that Hugo is just too classy to be, and does a bit of not-so-by-the-book snooping on Hugo's behalf. This, along with a plot that involves secrets and codes and Nazi hunters, provides the spy novel flavor.

The cerebral mystery aspect comes from Hugo himself. While he is not the sort of showoff that Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot can be, he is pretty good at stringing together observations into deductions.

Put it all together, and you have a book that succeeds on several levels. I enjoyed it very much, and am happy to know the series includes several books.

"Um livro raro. Um sobrevivente do Holocausto. Uma história perfeita para todos os que gostam de livros"

Pensei que fosse um livro sobre o Holocausto, mas não, o que me desiludiu um pouco.
Porém, conta algumas curiosidades acerca dos livros, ou melhor, coisas que faziam aos livros dessa época, que eu desconhecia.

Fantastic murder mystery, set in Paris. Once we can travel again to Paris, I look forward to visiting the many places that Mr. Pryor so adeptly and lovingly describes.

Bonus stars (not really, it gets five stars anyway!) for the fact that the author and I graduated from the same law school.

I was attracted to this book by its title, expecting a mystery/thriller revolving around books. While there is a bit of that, I found the characters to be poorly drawn and unbelievable, the dialogue to be unrealistic, the writing to be plodding and the plot to be far-fetched. In other words, I did not like this book. Since it was Pryor’s debut novel, I might take a chance on the second in the Hugo Marston series, but not for a while