A letter from Laurence Lefèvre and Liliane Korb

Dear all,

We are delighted that our books are to be published in English. We ourselves love the literature of your country – from Shakespeare to Nick Hornby via Jane Austen, the Brontës and many others! Our favourite thriller writers are Agatha Christie and PD James and, of course, Conan Doyle.

For us London has the attraction of an exotic city, even though it is familiar to us. We have been there many times and have delighted in tracking down second-hand and antiquarian books on Portobello Road or Charing Cross Road – because in addition to our writing, we have both been booksellers on the banks of the Seine, as were our parents before us.

So when we thought of writing a series of thrillers it was only natural that we should create a bookseller-sleuth and that our bookseller, Victor Legris should have an English mother and spend his youth in London, where his father ran a bookshop on Sloane Square and also that Victor’s adoptive father, Kenji Mori, should have spent many years in your capital. All these elements just felt right to us. As for the period, although we wanted to describe Paris of the Belle Époque, even here Britain shows its influence. London in the 1890’s shows through like a watermark beneath fin-de-siècle Paris.

So what joy to discover that our characters including Victor, his companion Tasha, his assistant Joseph, Kenji Mori and the circle of friends we gave them, were to cross the Channel to try to win over the British public! It will be the fulfilment of a childhood dream to see our books on your shelves and to feel a little British ourselves.

So a heartfelt thank you to all of you who work so hard to promote writing.

With very best wishes

Laurence Lefèvre and Liliane Korb

Read an extract from Murder on the Eiffel Tower, the first Victor Legris mystery

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