“One True Sentence,” by Craig McDonald: Murder and sex in the City of Lights

Looking for a riveting stew of murder, sex, history and literature?

“One True Sentence,” by Craig McDonald, offers that and a lot more. The novel, part of a series featuring writer Hector Lassiter, is set in Paris during the 1920s. Lassiter, who writes stories for crime magazine Black Mask while pondering more literary ambitions, is one of the many Americans huddled in the City of Lights and spends his non-writing time drinking hard and hobnobbing with the likes of Ernest Hemingway, Gertrude Stein, Ford Maddox Ford and other writers and poets. When someone begins knocking off publishers of literary magazines, it naturally catches their attention. Soon Hector, Hemingway and the others find themselves poking around into the investigation and finding themselves in a great deal of trouble.

I enjoyed this book on several levels. It is a fine noir novel on its own, with great femme fatales and a…