A confession fifty years in the making puts everyone’s
favorite Paris détéctive très chic, Aimée Leduc, on a
collision course with the “Hand,” a cabal of corrupt
Parisian cops among who masterminded her father’s murder—
and among whose ranks he might have once found membership.
When a friend’s child is kidnapped while wearing her
daughter’s hoodie, Aimée realizes that the case has
crossed into the realm of the personal in more ways than
one.
A dying man drags his oxygen machine into the office of
Éric Besson, a lawyer in Paris’s 13th arrondissement. The
old man, an accountant, is carrying a dilapidated notebook
full of meticulous investment records. For decades, he has
been helping a cadre of dirty cops launder stolen money.
The notebook contains his full confession—he’s waited 50
years to make it, and now it can’t wait another day. He is
adamant that Besson get the notebook into the hands of La
Proc, Paris’s chief prosecuting attorney, so the
corruption can finally be brought to light. But en route
to La Proc, Besson’s courier—his assistant and nephew—is
murdered, and the notebook disappears.
Grief-stricken Éric Besson tries to hire private
investigator Aimée Leduc to find the notebook, but she is
reluctant to get involved. Her father was a cop and was
murdered by the same dirty syndicate the notebook
implicates. She’s not sure which she’s more afraid of, the
dangerous men who would kill for the notebook or the idea
that her father’s name might be among the dirty cops
listed within it. Ultimately that’s the reason she must
take the case, which leads her across the Left Bank, from
the Cambodian enclave of Khmer Rouge refugees to the
ancient royal tapestry factories to the modern art
galleries.