Set in the Parisian neighbourhood of Belleville, Aimee Leduc's second investigation involves a defence minister's wife. A car bombing may be linked to a group of Islamic fundamentalists who have taken over a church in protest over immigration laws. Tension runs high in this working-class neighborhood as a hunger strike to protest strict immigration laws escalates among the Algerian immigrants. Aimee barely escapes death in a car bombing in this tale...

"A dying man drags his oxygen machine into the office of Eric Besson, a lawyer in Paris's 13th arrondissement. The old man, an accountant, is carrying a dilapidated notebook full of meticulous investment records. For decades, he has been helping a cadre of dirty cops launder stolen money. The notebook contains his full confession--he's waited 50 years to make it, and now it can't wait another day. He is adamant that Besson get the notebook into the...

Aimée Leduc is about to go onstage to give the keynote address at a tech conference that is sure to secure Leduc Detective some much-needed business contracts when she gets an emergency phone call from her daughter's playgroup: Aimée's own mother, who was supposed to pick up Chloé, never showed. Abandoning her hard-won speaking gig, Aimée rushes to get Chloé, annoyed that, yet again, her mother has let her down. But as Aimée and Chloé are leaving...

When Aimée Leduc's godfather, Morbier, a police "commissaire," asks her to check on his girlfriend at her home there, Aimée finds Xavierre, a "haut bourgeois" matron of Basque origin, strangled in her garden while Aimée waits inside. Circumstantial evidence makes Morbier the prime suspect, and to vindicate him, Aimée must identify the real killer.

Two weeks after Princess Diana's death in Paris in 1997, an illegal Haitian immigrant named Mireille walks into Aimée Leduc's office, claiming that Aimée's late father was also her father. Before Aimée can learn more, Mireille disappears, leaving only a cryptic note with an address in the Latin Quarter where the indomitable Parisian detective finds the corpse of a well-dressed black man with his ear cut off.

November 1989: Aimee Leduc is in her first year of college at Paris's preeminent medical school. She lives in a 17th-century apartment that overlooks the Seine with her father, who runs the family detective agency. But the week the Berlin Wall crumbles, so does Aimee's life as she knows it. First, someone has sabotaged her lab work, putting her at risk of failing out of the program. Then, she finds out her aristo boyfriend is getting engaged to another...

Aimée's childhood friend, Laure, is a policewoman. Her partner, Jacques, has set up a meeting in Montmartre with an informer. When Laure reluctantly goes along as backup, Jacques is lured to an icy rooftop, where he is shot to death. Laure's gun has been fired, gunpowder residue is found on her hands, and she is charged with her partner's murder. The police close ranks against the alleged cop killer. Aimée is determined to clear Laure. In doing...