PARIS MATCH

Attorney/CIA consultant/hotelier Stone Barrington whiles away the time waiting to see whether his good friend, pregnant first lady Katharine Lee, will be elected president by dodging death threats from the same old enemies relocated to the City of Light.

Stone is in Paris for the opening of l’Arrington, the latest in the chain of hotels memorializing his late wife. He’s sorry to say goodbye to his most recent inamorata, Lee’s deputy campaign director Ann Keaton, and he completely deflects the forthright advances of rapacious American ambassador Linda Flournoy. But there are other prospects in Paris, like dress designer Mirabelle Chance, whose only baggage is a father and brother who are both prefects of police, so naturally he succumbs to her. And to his sometime lover Holly Barker, whom CIA director Lance Cabot has sent to Paris just in case they run out of women there. But not to Katharine Lee, whose baby a scurrilous blogger accuses Stone of fathering even though they’re just good friends. The requisite violence is supplied by Yevgeny Majorov, who accurately suspects Stone of having a hand in his brother Yuri’s death when Yuri attempted to throw a lasso over Stone’s Los Angeles flagship (Doing Hard Time, 2013). Sleeker and smoother than Yuri, Yevgeny is equally determined to seize control of Stone’s latest hotel and additionally determined to avenge his brother’s death. Matters come to a head when one of Stone and Mirabelle’s trysts is interrupted by a masked gunman, but after Mirabelle shoots the intruder dead, there are surprisingly few complications.

All this, and much less, is played out against a generic Paris that, apart from the title and the dust jacket illustration, could have been St. Petersburg, Prague or Pittsburgh.