Paul: Hugger Mugger in the Louvre

Homer Evans has a wacky group of friends who lead you all over Paris, up and down the Seine, through cafés filled with celebrities, taxidermist shops, subway stations, the musty dens of Egyptologists and the wards of a fantastic madhouse. There is violence aplenty and corpses are in the most unexpected places. The New York Herald Tribune Books says, “This, as you might guess, is the funniest mystery on tap—that is, the funniest by far, for all other comic thrillers seem pale and wan beside Mr. Paul’s robustious works.” You can’t fail to get plenty of gusty guffaws and spine-tickling chills as you join lovely Miriam Leonard, hard-drinking Norwegian-American painter Hjalmar Jansen, former member of the Tsar’s army Lvov Kvek, Chief of Detectives Frémont of the Paris Police, and the medical examiner, Dr. Hyacinthe Toudoux, to help Homer Evans solve this mystery that starts with the theft of a famous Watteau painting from the Louvre.

Additional

First published in 1940.

Review

“Fantastically amusing and thrilling . . . completely cockeyed and hugely entertaining.” Jack Ketch, New York Herald Tribune