I still think Tess is a spy.
ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
I am once again indebted to my agent, Erica Silverman, this time for solving a puzzle. Early in the process, I mentioned to Erica that in this novel I wanted to have Victor Hugo inscribe a copy of Les Misérables to someone famous, but I hadn’t yet come up with who that famous person should be. Without hesitating, she said, “Well, Charles Dickens, of course!” As I explored that idea, it turned out to be perfect.
I also want to thank my editors at Thomas & Mercer, Alan Turkus and Kjersti Egerdahl, for encouraging me to write a third novel following on the adventures of Robert, Jenna and Oscar in Death on a High Floor and Long Knives, and thank the rest of the crew at Thomas & Mercer, especially Jacque Ben-Zekry, Gracie Doyle, Tiffany Pokorny, Anh Schleup, and Alison Dasho for making the publishing experience such fun.
And once again, I want to express my deep appreciation to my great developmental editor, Charlotte Herscher, who not only spots flaws in a manuscript that others may have missed but quickly—and gently—suggests excellent ways to fix them.
And my deep appreciation as well, to the copy editor, Dara Kaye, who did a terrific job of smoothing and improving prose, nailing inconsistencies, wrestling the manuscript into compliance with the various style conventions and, among many other things, made sense of and implemented the conventions in the style manuals concerning when and where italics are to be used for foreign words—something that drove me crazy before she took it over and mastered it. And my profound thanks to Julianne Molinari, the proof reader, who did an excellent and meticulous job of ferreting out all the myriad small errors that can creep into a long manuscript, not to mention nailing a few large ones that, left unfixed, would have been distracting to readers.
I also want to acknowledge and thank the many friends who provided encouragement, who read the manuscript in its various stages and drafts and then gave me such helpful, candid notes, as well as those friends, old and new, who were kind enough to share their expertise with me, from rare books to French legal procedure, as well as those who were just generally supportive. The entire list is long, but it includes especially Roger Chittum, Brinton Rowdybush, Linda and John Brown, Melanie Chancellor, Amy Huggins, Annye Camara, Marty Beech, Andy Schepard, Deanna Wilcox, Cynthia Cohen, Richard Schepard and Michele Schubert-Schepard, Jean-Baptiste Parlos, Céline Garçon, Claude Bendel, Hugues Calvet, Eric Dezeuze, Sylvie Morabia, Bob Rawson, Jack Walker, Phil Pirages, Elaine Katz, Eric Grangeon, Nicole Kaneza, Christine Anderson, Jessica Kaye and Richard Brewer, Julie Rutiz, Bob Stock, Wendy Perkins, Michael Haines, Françoise Queval, Nadine Eisenkolb, Maxine Nunes, Prucia Buscell, Dale Franklin, Deborah Dowling, Tom and Juanita Ringer, Marie Francoise and Pierre Levaillant, and Aisha Asanova.
And with thanks, too, to my son, Joe, for his terrific notes on the early drafts, and, as always, to my wife, Sally Anne, for her patient and perceptive editorial comments on this, my third novel. No husband could ask for more.
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Photo © 2013 Deborah Geffner
Charles Rosenberg is the author of the bestselling legal thriller Death on a High Floor and its sequel, Long Knives, as well as the 1994 viewer’s guide to watching a criminal trial, The Trial of O. J.: How to Watch the Trial and Understand What’s Really Going On. He was one of two on-air legal analysts for E! Television’s live coverage of the O. J. Simpson criminal and civil trials. Rosenberg has also been credited as the legal script consultant for the television shows Boston Legal, L.A. Law, The Practice and The Paper Chase.
During college, Rosenberg spent a year in France, where he had many adventures. He traveled around the country in a VW Bus with some young Belgians he met while admiring the Bayeux Tapestry in Normandy, attended a French-language “boot camp” in Besançon, worked for two months on an apple farm in a small village near Dijon and studied French history for two semesters at a university in Southern France. He has returned to France many times since, most recently to interview lawyers, judges, law students and law professors as part of his research for Paris Ransom.
Since graduating from Antioch College and Harvard Law School, where he was an editor of the law review, Rosenberg has had a long career as a partner in large law firms and as an adjunct law professor at several prominent law schools, including Loyola, UCLA and Pepperdine. He is currently a partner in a three-lawyer firm in the Los Angeles area, where he lives with his wife.
Paris Ransom Page 33
