An American goes to Paris to forget an unhappy love affair and becomes the translator of a mysterious French novel.

Another nice book about Shakespeare from the author of The Genius of Shakespeare. The subject is what can be learned about his life from studying his plays.

The editor, Lisa Allen-Agostini, was on the BBC program The Strand last night (May 16, 2009, repeated from Tuesday). She said that she was getting good stories but they weren't noir. She told her co-editor Jeanne Mason: We need some dead bodies! This character--bump him off. Sombody has to die!

Monica Ali's previous books were Brick Lane and Alentejo Blue.