Zoe Loves Paris

My name is Zoe Barlow and as of December, 1922, I’ve been living in Paris for four years. And while I’m not a detective—or a killer—I’ve somehow wound up in the middle of a multiple-murder case.

It all began when my friend Hadley Hemingway asked me to help find her husband’s missing manuscripts. Poor Hadley had been sick with the Spanish flu when Ernest cabled her Paris apartment to send a copy of his work to Lausanne, Switzerland, to show a publisher he’d just met. Being a good wife, she complied, and set out by train for Lausanne the next morning with a valise stuffed with every word her husband had ever written, carbon copies included. Then someone stole the valise, and…

Well, here’s what happened.

Although Friday was my Poker Night, I was exchanging gossip with several friends over breakfast that morning at La Rotonde, when the Marquis Antoine Phillippe Fortier de Guise made a disparaging remark about the Hemingways. “That marriage will never last,” the arrogant snob sniped.

“Oh, shut up, Antoine,” snapped Dominique Garron, the war artist who’d had one eye shot out during the Battle of the Marne. “Who cares about the Hemingways? You know, if you couldn’t say anything nice, you’d never be able to speak at all!”

At that, everyone laughed, including Antoine, who recognized the truth when he heard it.

Breakfast proceeded peacefully enough for the next few minutes, until the Marquis started in again, this time about Kiki, the famous artists’ model who’d had more boyfriends than the defeated German Army had had infantry. Not wanting to listen to any more, I excused myself and departed poste haste for the art supply store. Envy, the painting I was currently working on, required more Paris Green, and I was almost out.

By the time I arrived, I was limping badly, a reminder of the accident that had left me permanently lamed. But I was good at dealing with pain, especially when distracted by rows and rows of glorious color. Cadmium Red. Prussian Blue. Chrome Yellow. And that highly poisonous-but-lush Paris Green.

Why, it was almost as enjoyable as sex!

Purchases completed (yes, I wound up buying a tube of each) I headed home to Le Petit Bibelot, my own little jewel of Parisian paradise, where I went straight to work. Four hours later, Envy was completed, so I got ready for Poker Night. Now that I’d spent so much money on paint, I needed to replenish my bank account.

I don’t have as much money as my friends believed. When my family exiled me from Beech Glen, the family plantation in Mercy, Alabama, my brother Brice had set up an account for me at Paris’s Banque 6 Nationale de Crédit. The tiny amount was meant to punish me for loving the wrong man and having his baby, but because of my poker skills—a gift from my deceased, poker-playing father—I wasn’t living the pauper-ish life Brice had planned.

And then, of course, there was Paris.

Even if I had been flat broke, the beauty of La Cité could have made poverty bearable. What Paris couldn’t heal was my grief over having my baby stolen from me minutes after her birth. For that, I’ve enlisted the skills of the International Pinkerton Detective Agency.

My little Amber child was out there somewhere, I knew. And one day—God willing—we would be reunited.

But for now, I need to find out who’s been killing my friends.

X X X

Lost in Paris
Genre: Historical
Release: April 2023
Format: Print, Digital, Audio
Purchase Link

Pulsing with the glamour and excitement of the Jazz Age, Lost in Paris explores a young woman’s journey to redeem herself from the heartaches of her past, while finding her way forward in tumultuous, unprecedented times.

NO ONE CAN HURT YOU LIKE FAMILY

PARIS, 1922: Zoe Barlow knows the pain of loss. By the age of eighteen, she’d already lost her father to suicide, and her reputation to an ill-fated love affair―not to mention other losses, too devastating for words. Exiled from her home and her beloved younger sister by their stepmother, she was unceremoniously dumped in Paris without a friend to help her find her way.

Four years later, Zoe has forged a new life as a painter amidst fellow artists, expats, and revolutionary thinkers struggling to make sense of the world in the aftermath of war. She’s adopted this Lost Generation as her new family, so when her dear friend Hadley Hemingway loses a valise containing all of her husband Ernest’s writings, Zoe happily volunteers to track it down. But her search for the bag keeps leading to murder victims, and Zoe must again face hard losses―this time among her adopted tribe. If she persists in her reckless quest to find the killer, the next life lost may be her own.

About the author
Betty Webb is the author of the contemporary Lena Jones mystery series (Desert Wives, etc.) and the Gunn Zoo mysteries (The Panda of Death, etc.). But now she’s stepped into a time machine for her new history/mystery series with Lost in Paris, set in 1922. During Betty’s 20 years as a journalist, she has interviewed U.S. presidents, astronauts who walked on the moon, Nobel Prize-winners, and polygamy runaways. In between her frequent trips to Paris, she lives in Scottsdale, Arizona, with five cats and one husband. Betty’s web site at bettywebb-mystery.com.

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