Number 7, Rue Jacob: A Maggie MacGowen Mystery (Maggie MacGowen Mystery, 11) - Softcover

Hornsby, Wendy

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1564745996 ISBN 13: 9781564745996

Publisher: Perseverance Press, 2018

Synopsis

Imagine your every move is being tracked by someone whose clear intention is to do you harm. Filmmaker Maggie MacGowen arrives at the Paris apartment she inherited from the mother she never knew, ready to begin a settled life with her fiancé, Jean-Paul Bernard. But a cryptic phone call from Jean-Paul, summoning her, begins a nightmare winter odyssey across Europe as they try to stay a step ahead of a predator who uses every electronic medium to stalk their every move. Clearly, someone wishes them harm. But who? And why? As they try to answer those questions, their unknown nemesis uses the internet to offer a reward for their capture, turning the pursuit into a crazy real-world video game with an infinite number of players and no rules.

About this title

About the Author

Edgar Award winner Wendy Hornsby is the author of twelve previous mysteries, ten of them featuring investigative filmmaker Maggie MacGowen. A retired professor of history, she lives in Northern California.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

I rang the bell at number 7, rue Jacob a third time. From somewhere behind the imposing iron gates fronting the narrow Left Bank street, I could hear a buzz, but no one responded. A passing car splashed icy mud on my jeans. I swore, I shivered and rang the bell again. For once, I didn't care that I was in Paris. I hadn't been to bed for two days and I hadn't had a bath for far too long. My phone was dead. When a second car sprayed me with road muck I pushed the buzzer and held it. Finally, a voice crackled over the speaker set into the wall beside me: "Oui?"

A noisy service van passed behind me so I leaned in closer to the speaker to be heard. "Madame Gonsalves? I'm Isabelle Martin's daughter, Maggie MacGowen. My brother told you I was coming."

"Freddy? No. He told me nothing." But, slowly, the tall gates

began to part. As they opened, I peered through the growing gap, curious as I got my first glimpse at the intimate world hidden behind those barriers. A massive house rose like a great stone bastion around three sides of a well-swept cobblestoned courtyard. What kept the structure from being foreboding on that dark, drizzly morning was that the façade of each of the three wings was architecturally distinct from the others, so that the overall impression was a bit fanciful. A Baroque wing with a mansard roofline and an sandstone country chàteau bookended a tall Gothic éminence grise. Clearly, the house had been erected in phases, likely over a long span of time, and probably by a succession of owners. The number of marked parking spaces along the sides of the courtyard meant that the whole had been subdivided into flats. But the location in the sixth arrondissement of Paris meant that the price of even a studio apartment here would be breathtaking. Beyond my means, anyway. I could not quite accept the fact that, through inheritance from someone who was a stranger to me, my mother, Isabelle, I owned a piece of it.

After a deep breath, I grabbed the handles of my two suitcases, the heavier of them full of camera gear, and started through the gates. A round, flame-haired woman wearing a calico apron over her woolen skirt came out through a side door and stood in my path; the racket of a television game show leaked out the door

behind her. As she walked toward me, she folded her cardigan across her full bosom and eyed me warily, as if I might be selling vacuum cleaners or kitchen gadgets out of my big black cases.

Edition details

• Publisher: Perseverance Press
• Publication date: 2018
• ISBN 10: 1564745996
• ISBN 13: 9781564745996
• Binding: Paperback
• Language: English
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 274