Lucien couldn't have moved if he'd wanted to he was frozen with fear. 'Don't move, you bastard, or you'll be sleeping next to your friend,' said the officer. Here before him was bizarre proof that blue and red indeed made purple.Ī German officer holding a steel-blue Luger ran up alongside him, followed by two tall soldiers with submachine guns, which they immediately trained on Lucien. In an art class at school, he had to paint boring color wheel exercises. He was oddly mesmerized, not by the dead body, but by the new color the blood had produced on his suit. There had been plenty of killings in Paris in the two years since the beginning of the German occupation in 1940, but Lucien had never actually seen a dead body until this moment.

The dark crimson fluid flowed quickly in a narrow rivulet down his neck, over his crisp white collar, and then onto his well-tailored navy blue suit, changing its color to a rich deep purple. Just two meters away, the man lay face down on the sidewalk, blood streaming from the back of his bald head as though someone had turned on a faucet inside his skull. In the very second that Lucien realized he and the man wore the same scent, L'Eau d'Aunay, he heard a loud crack. He came so close that Lucien could smell his cologne as he raced by. 'A twisted mystery.Just as Lucien Bernard rounded the corner at the rue la Boétie, a man running from the opposite direction almost collided with him. 'A twisted mystery.Belfoure gets better and better'-Karen Bakshoian, Letterpress Books (Portland, ME) who caused it? And why? And what if they find out who he used to be?Ī chilling novel of architecture, intrigue, and identity, this historical thriller uncovers one man's quest to clear his name and correct the mistake that ruined his life. He needs to assume a new identity and rebuild his life.īut the disgraced man soon finds himself digging up the past in a way he never anticipated. When the architect is finally released from prison, he has no job, no family, nowhere to go. The man should have known better, should have made it safer, should have done something.ĭouglas Layton knows the flaw wasn't in his design, but he can't fight a guilty verdict. Over a dozen people are killed, and the fingers all point at the architect. Someone has to take the blame when the Britannia Theatre's balcony collapses. From the New York Times bestselling author of The Paris Architect!Ĭharles Belfoure's next novel is a puzzling historical thriller about a man who must dig through the rubble of his past to construct a future worth living, grounded by Belfoure's experiences as a professional architect.

The paris architect by charles belfoure