RED TIGER HUNTING

A battle-scarred WWI veteran travels to Jazz Age Paris to find the missing daughter of a New York financier in Juden’s debut novel.

John Griffin dropped out of college to go to war and has just returned from Europe. He suffered some scarring, but his psychological damage runs deeper. John finds peacetime concerns to be trivial (“How could the humdrum, meaningless, contemptible lives of so many of the people I saw daily...warrant the extinction of the men I knew?”). He is aimless in New York when a Wall Street financier asks him to go on a mission. Harry Armistan’s daughter Patricia has married an Englishman named Gavin Kingsbury. They were supposed to visit Italy for their honeymoon, but they have disappeared. Harry has a financial stake in the matter also; Gavin was supposed to deliver some documents to men in London, but he didn’t. Intrigued, and encouraged by the large sum of money Harry is offering, John accepts the offer and sets out to find the missing couple. In England, Gavin’s sister, Sarah, becomes a distraction and a complication for John’s investigation, and a journey to Paris raises the stakes when it becomes clear that Europe’s fragile peace is under threat. Juden’s historical thriller transports the reader back in time and gives a convincing account of the postwar experience at home and abroad. John is battle weary but still young and eager for adventure while cunning enough to not buckle while handling a complex job. Many scenes are lengthy and the story is somewhat protracted, but the century-old settings are both familiar and sleek, and the characters (including real historical figures, such as war hero and jazz musician Eugene Bullard) are mysterious enough to keep the action scenes interesting.

A rousing adventure in jazzy post–WWI Europe.