Extraordinary People: A stunning cold-case mystery from the bestselling author of The Lewis Trilogy (The Enzo Files Book 1)

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Enzo and his small team set to work and he begins using his long-unused skills to eke out clues and information.

There is also Charlotte, who is the first woman since his second wife to make him feel all gooey inside. What is especially fascinating about reading this book is the amount of specific geography Peter May provides. This is something I haven’t encountered in later May books such as The Chess Trilogy, something I see that as a major positive development. She is the most recent lover of his fellow investigator Raffin, which provides added tension to an already frayed relationship.very naive of me to think that a book set in Paris by a Brit would have similar themes running through it. Scottish-Italian Enzo Macleod, a somewhat jaded biology professor in regional France, accepts a wager requiring him to solve the 10-year-old unsolved disappearance of enigmatic and well-connected mover and shaker Jacques Gaillard. It’s not my normal fare when it comes to crime teccy but Im sure it’ll appeal too many with its easy going ways. A wager has left a forensic expert (that term is used loosely, as he has not really worked in the field for twenty years) on a quest to solve a notorious unsolved crime of France.

Footprints in the snow lead to the murder scene of Marc Fraysse, France's most celebrated chef - brutally shot before he could make the revelation of his career. In Extraordinary People, we meet a middle-aged man, Scots but living in France, a college biology professor who used to be a well known and respected forensic scientist in his native country, a man with grown daughters, one Scotch, one French. The plot itself veers uncomfortably close to being overly contrived at times, a standard hallmark of anything that seems to involve solving clues and following a trail, but thankfully, Extraordinary People never entirely jumps the shark.He turns beneath the nine metre span of the only remaining screen in all of Paris, a delicate tracery of stone carving and spiral staircase curling around slender columns soaring into blackness, and he stops beneath Christ on the cross, a calvary taken from the chapel of the Ècole Polytechnique to replace a predecessor destroyed during the Revolution.

As well as a being a good mystery it is also full of interesting facts such as the catacombs, champagne …. a rendezvous with the French Minister of Justice, otherwise known as the Garde des Sceaux, literally the Keeper of the Seals…. These clues are in the form of physical riddles left by the killer for reasons which do not become clear until the crime is solved.There are six books in the series, and I have the second one, The Critic, nestled on my shelves, ready to be plucked up whenever I feel like joining Enzo for another investigation. In 1989, a killer dumped the body of twenty-year-old Lucie Martin into a picturesque lake in the West of France. Some readers will find character attitudes and behaviour a little eyebrow-raising: this is definitely a book written from a male perspective! Yes, Macleod comes with a lot of baggage that includes his personality, living arrangements and a tendency to rely on alcohol for peace of mind. This one is set in France and follows the investigation of a cold case by Enzo McLeod a forensic scientist who is teaching biology at a French university.

Enzo Macleod is determined to see if he can succeed where others have failed and, as a result of a possibly rather ill-advised bet, he has 2,000 Euros he can’t afford to lose riding on the outcome. Enzo is interesting and likeable but in the end Bertrand takes the prize for the strongest, fastest and totally best character. I am one of only four people in the UK to have trained as a Byford scientist—which also makes me an expert on serious serial crime analysis.There is none of the flashbacks that made up a good part of the Lewis books but there was still the rich descriptions of the country and history that seems to be Peter May's trademark. Enzo has taken a bet to solve seven celebrated cold cases featured in a book written by Paris-based journalist Roger Raffin, by applying recent technology (with assistance from student Nicole). I thoroughly enjoyed reading Extraordinary People (also published as Dry Bones), an adventure-thriller set in various beguiling locations around France.