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Murder mystery explores literary world of 1920s Paris

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By Vick Mickunas 7:59 PM Friday, February 11, 2011

“One True Sen-tence” by Craig McDonald (Minotaur Books, 324 pages, $26.99)

Craig McDonald came up with a brilliant premise for a mystery series. McDonald, a writer from the Columbus area, researched the career of the legendary novelist Ernest Hemingway. Then he imagined another writer named Hector Lassiter to be Hemingway’s best friend.

In the third novel in this series, “Print the Legend,” which came out last year, Hector Lassiter is in Idaho. It’s the early 1960s, and his dear friend Hemingway is dead, by suicide. Lassiter is trying to get his hands on a suitcase full of manuscripts that were written when the two friends were living in Paris during the 1920s.

One beauty of this series is McDonald’s startling skill at shifting back and forth across time. The fourth book, “One True Sentence,” is set in Paris in February 1924. Lassiter and Hemingway were hungry young writers then, members of the so-called Lost Generation of Americans who had converged on that city after the First World War.

Hemingway hasn’t written any novels yet. Lassiter sells pulp fiction stories to magazines back in the states. “Hem” and “Lasso” are inseparable.

McDonald sprinkles “One True Sentence” with cameo appearances by famous novelists, poets and artists who lived in Paris during that period. Then he imagines a cast of characters who force the action.

There are three primary female characters. Molly is a poet from Illinois. She’s hopelessly in love with Hector. Another woman, Brinke, is rather mysterious. Hector eventually discovers that she is a writer, too. She writes popular mystery novels under the name of a man, Connor Templeton. Our third femme fatale, Estelle, is a British mystery writer who specializes in novels that usually feature murders by poisoning.

So we have all these writers milling about in Paris. And there are all these little literary magazines that are publishing their stories and poetry. As Lassiter and Hemingway are living it up, eating, drinking, dancing, they begin to notice a troubling trend, some of their associates are dying in peculiar ways.

One man is poisoned. Another is stabbed. Hemingway is crossing the street when the writer in front of him is hit by a car. The victims had one thing in common; they were all publishers of those Parisian literary magazines.

So all these crime writers put their heads together to try to solve these crimes. McDonald’s ingenious plot has this maelstrom of mystery writers who are writing their own fictional stories while simultaneously being whirled through a lethal tsunami of impending doom. At one point Hector muses: “Oftentimes, the obvious solution is the right one, he told himself. Except in crime and mystery novels.”

We get glimpses of how writers write: “Hem was sitting at a table at the rear of the cafe. He sat with his back to the wall and facing the room. It was a gunfighter’s table choice ... or a writer’s, Hector thought. It provided a man the panorama of the place. It was a prime spot from which to watch and absorb and eavesdrop on those close by. To listen for a snatch of dialogue or an interesting speech pattern to appropriate.”

Vick Mickunas interviews authors every Friday at 1:30 p.m. and on Sundays at 11 a.m. on WYSO-FM (91.3). For more information, visit www.wyso.org/BookNook.html. Contact him at vick@vickmickunas.com.

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