This mystery crime thriller follows FBI agent Angel Blondeaux as she returns home to rural Moreau Parish where the Blondeaux family's crime empire is woven into the fabric of the town. Her grandmother is the matriarch of the family and all Blondeauxs - except for Angel - have a role in the crime family. Angel was all but banished when she left to join the FBI but, now, the mysterious death of her aunt brings Angel back to face her family. The FBI hope she can get information about the family's business. As Angel digs through her aunt's house that was left to Angel in the will, she starts to unearth secrets decades old - including hints to the whereabouts of a school bus full of high school athletes that disappeared 30 years ago.
Right at the start, I want to say that I absolutely loved this book. It was dark, twisty, atmospheric, and thrilling. I'm a big watcher of crime TV shows and this book read like a season of a show like True Detective. While Angel is an FBI agent and she is technically on assignment, since she's a bit undercover, it didn't read like a procedural. It really read like a small town secrets sort of thriller that really amped up to more like an action movie at the end.
For me, the setting was key for this story and it really paid off. I love it when the setting of a book is so well developed and described that it really feels like the author knows it inside and out. After finishing the book, I looked at the author's information and Findorff was born and raised in New Orleans, graduated from the University of New Orleans, and served six years in the Louisiana National Guard. This isn't to say the book is loaded down with a ton of extra description, but rather that the descriptions were so particular that they really gave the most bang for their buck on the page. The setting also has all the built in tension potential of a small town gossip mill. As someone who is from a small town, I can really appreciate the little comments about "oh X mentioned they saw Y there" or "go ask A, I'm sure they'll tell you B" where everyone knows just enough of everyone else's business to be annoying. Add to that setting the fact that the Blondeaux family pretty much runs the town and knows everyone's business and it is a perfect storm of drama, backstabbing, secret keeping, and deal making.
I found the characters in this story to be well developed and intriguing. I loved Angel as a main character with her sharp wit and laid back calculating of situations. It was really interesting to get in her head as she was dealing with the conflicts in the story and navigating the relationships with the people in the town. The other member of the Blondeaux family were also really interesting, especially how many of them owned businesses that were fronts for illegal activity at the same time as providing legitimate services for the other members of the town. The sort of moral dilemmas or cognitive dissonance that some characters have was fascinating. No one argues that the Blondeaux family aren't criminals, but they also support the community (as long as everyone stays in line). I also loved how the family was a matriarchy with the power passed on from mother to daughter which was a refreshing take on typical criminal enterprises. We do meet a pretty large cast of characters, but they are introduced pretty slowly so I never got confused about who each character was. However, one part that threw me off a little is that the first half of the book was told from Angel's point of view and then we started getting other points of view around the midpoint. I don't mind multiple POVs in my thrillers and I understand the reason why we needed these other view points but it was just a bit jarring. I wish we would have gotten some other characters earlier so it wouldn't be such a change after I had settled into Angel's character so much.
The main part I didn't love about this story was the romance. Angel is single when she arrives in town and strikes up a romance with the local lawyer who drew up Angel's aunt's will. They start off fine with some light flirting but I really didn't get any chemistry at all from them. Now the romance wasn't much of a plot point in that there isn't much conflict brought about by their relationship so it really felt very surface level. I do read a lot of romance so maybe my romance-meter is a little skewed, but I really just couldn't believe these two actually had feelings for each other. After finishing the book, it feels like the romance was just to give him a reason to be integrated into Angel's investigation so I personally think a better way would be for maybe them to become friends. I'm pretty sure all of the plot points, more or less, could have stayed the same if these two were just friends instead. I really enjoy romantic suspense novels and romance subplots in my thrillers so I was a little bummed by the fact that I didn't get a whole lot of feelings from their relationship. The two characters do tell each other (and the reader) that they do like each other so I think this one plot point fell into the telling side rather than the showing side so I just took the characters at their word and went on with the story.
I really enjoyed the overall mystery thread and how everything comes together at the end. When the bus full of high school boys went missing originally there was an investigation but no answers were found. We are also told there have been other investigations into other criminal activities over the years, but nothing has ever stuck to the Blondeaux family so Angel's goal is pretty much to get any information she can that could make something stick to the family. She knows the family is pretty tight lipped about their activities and sees the assignment as more or less a dead end but she agrees and slowly starts pulling on threads, seeing what she can get to unravel. At one point, she even admits to the reader that she is basically asking questions that she know will draw attention to see what she can get to happen. The way the puzzle pieces come together is really satisfying and while the investigation takes logical steps when Angel decides to who to talk to or where to go next, there are some reveals that are still surprising. Pretty much the last 25% of the book I couldn't turn the pages fast enough and kept gasping while reading.
Overall, this was a fantastically crafted crime thriller that felt like I was watching a really good season of television. Surprising reveals, complex characters, and an atmospheric setting - I can't recommend this enough.
I received a free ARC of Blood Paris from Book Sirens and I am leaving this review voluntarily.
Expected publication date is May 31, 2021.
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