Cara Black Writes a NON-Aimee Leduc Novel!

Everybody knows Cara Black and her Aimee Leduc protagonist.  I mean, after all, she has written 19 books in that series!  She has enabled all of us to learn a lot about Paris while giving us state of the art mysteries. Now, she's written a standalone novel, THREE HOURS IN PARIS, that takes place in 1940.  It's a fact that in June of that year Hitler spent a total of 3 hours in Paris.  Cara has taken that fact and reimagined history with (per the book cover) "One American Riflewoman. One Impossible Spy Mission. One Shot at Changing the Course of History."  How clever is this?  It's good to see that Cara hasn't gotten so buried in her Leduc series that she can't write anything else.  Well I'm here to tell you that she certainly can!  I'm not going to post the back cover blurb because the front cover tells us what we need to know.

Is the book any good?  How about a Goodreads rating of 4.30/5 with 76 people weighing in.  Why are there so few?  Good question.  It's because the book is not even out yet.  It doesn't hit bookstores  (or ebooks or audiobooks) for another 3 weeks.  By this time in April, you are probably going to see ratings in the thousands.  And I would be very surprised if that 4.30 did any dipping.  In fact, it could very easily climb.  For those who don't know what 4.30/5 means, let me assure you that it is a VERY high rating.  Even the highly touted Where the Crawdad Sings and The Extraordinary Life of Sam Hell are only a couple of percentage points above Cara's THIP .

We all know big-name authors who write very successful series.  When they have the guts to venture out into a standalone (and, believe me, it does take guts), they don't always fare so well.  Cara does NOT fall into that category.  She has gone outside her comfort zone and has become firmly ensconced in a new one.  She will undoubtedly return to Aimee Leduc, and we will welcome that.  But I think we'll all be waiting for that next standalone.  To borrow from the sports world, Cara Black's got game!