Paris, City of Night

Book excerpt: An American photographer in Paris is unwittingly drawn into a nightmarish terror plot when one of his daguerreotypes puts both his life and his adopted city in gravest peril There is a Paris that no tourist ever sees—a shadowy secret world of intrigue, betrayal, and murder. The son of a recently deceased CIA agent, photographer and American expatriate Jason Anthony Grant knows the dark side of the City of Light all too well. When an imitation daguerreotype he created for fun falls into the wrong hands, Jay finds himself a target, accused of fraud. Only by recovering the entire series of photographic fakes can he hope to avoid prosecution. But suddenly, other parties have become interested in his work: former Cold War operatives and Company spooks, French intelligence agents and cutthroat murderers with shady, unrevealed allegiances. They all want Jay for themselves, and not all of them want him alive. He discovers he’s become an unwitting pawn in a chilling conspiracy that could destroy the beautiful city he loves—a city that has now become a dark and dangerous maze with treacherous turns and too many dead ends. A breakneck-paced thriller brimming with intrigue, murder, espionage, terrorism, and relentless Hitchcockian surprise and suspense, David Downie’s Paris City of Night introduces readers to a Paris they’ve never imagined and a hero they will never forget.