Mark Pryor, a mystery novelist and criminal defense attorney, spoke about his new book The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris on May 14 at the Georgetown Public Library as part of the Hill Country Author Series.
The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris is part of a series that features Hugo Marston as the protagonist. In previous novels, Hugo was a Security Ambassador for the United States Embassy in Paris. However, in the latest novel, Hugo retires and opens his own bookshop — only to be pulled into investigating a murder at a Parisian chocolate factory.
Mr. Pryor said his favorite part of writing the novel was the research process, because he traveled to Paris and toured an American library located there. He described the library as not having very grand architecture; there were no columns or marble. What interested him the most, he said, was a dark basement with roped-off stairs.
“The nice young lady [who was] giving me the tour. She goes, ‘Oh, you don’t want to go down there. It’s kind of creepy.’ I look at her and I’m like, ‘Why do you think I'm here?’”
In the basement, there was a “huge portrait of a terrifying woman” beside an “Atelier” — the French term for workshop. There was one door in and one door out, which made it the perfect inspiration for the book. Mr. Pryor wrote The Most Mysterious Bookshop in Paris as a locked-room mystery— a form that Agatha Christie is famous for.
Mr. Pryor has worked on between 25-30 murder cases as an attorney. Although his knowledge of criminal investigations does help him write knowledgeably about the legal process, his day job hasn’t fed into his novels as much as one may believe.
“[The murders I’ve worked on] are always one of two things, either they're just horrible, grubby, unsexy. Unsexy is not a great word, but you know what I mean. They just, they're not interesting to write about— a drug deal or a man killing his wife. Then there's the other category: stuff that if I wrote about it, you wouldn't believe.”
Mr. Pryor worked on a case in East Austin where a dead body was found in a recycling center. Employees were standing at the conveyor belt sorting the paper, glass and plastic. Nothing was out of the ordinary, Mr. Prior explained, until the employees saw what they believed was a mannequin coming down the recycling belt.
“Why would somebody put a mannequin in the recycling?” Mr. Pryor reported an employee asking. “Then, somebody down [the conveyer belt] said, ‘Oh, that’s not a mannequin.’ ”
In real life, a detective was able to use mail near the body to find the address where the body was recycled. They went to the address and found a security camera with footage of the whole murder — the victim was hit over the head with a cinderblock and then dropped into the bin. Based on this footage, they were able to identify and arrest the perpetrator. Mr. Pryor said this story, although compelling, wouldn’t work as fiction. He said it doesn’t make any sense why the criminal would put the body in the recycling, instead of the trashcan.
“If I wrote that, you’d be like. ‘What? The guy’s an idiot.’ But that’s exactly what happened, and that’s why he got caught,” Mr. Pryor said.
The Most Mysterious Bookstore in Paris has more twists and turns. Copies of the book can be purchased at Lark and Owl booksellers.
The Hill Country Author Series is put on by The Friends of the Georgetown Public Library. The next scheduled event is going to be on November 12 at 2 p.m. and will feature Mark K. Updegrove speaking about his new book Make Your Mark . . . Lessons in Character from Seven Presidents.