The fourth in the series of Nestor Burma mysteries each set in a different Paris Arondissement — this time Nestor is kept busy in the quiet artists' studios and literary hotels of the Ile de la Cité and in the Jewish neighbourhood around the Rue des Rosiers.

It's a classic, overcomplicated noir plot, in which Nestor is working for his friend the painter Baget, who has found himself lumbered with a corpse he didn't order, and wants the murder investigation carried out as discreetly and speedily as possible; in the course of that investigation, he runs across the organised crime boss Dédé, and finds himself charged with a job he can't refuse, to look for a missing person believed to be in hiding somewhere in the Jewish community. There are various nasty echoes of things that happened during the Occupation, there is a vengeful Israeli army officer, and of course there are endless opportunities for Nestor to get knocked unconscious and come round to find a scantily-clad blonde pointing a gun at him.

Nestor's glamorous-but-untouchable assistant Hélène finds herself doing most of the actual brain-work once again, solving the mystery way ahead of her boss. This time she even gets kidnapped by the bad guys ("You're not the first Helen that's happened to," says Nestor coolly, and goes off to get drunk...).

As always, the charm is not in the ridiculous plot with its endless succession of corpses, ugly men, and beautiful women, still less in the mystery that no-one, including Nestor, really cares about any more by the end of the book. It's all about the gloriously colourful narrative style, which is up there with Chandler and Hammett, full of bad puns, extravagant similes, and exotic slang.

(In case anyone's puzzled about the title: it turns out that "faire du rébecca" is a slang expression for getting angry, provoking a fight, making trouble. About half the citations in the dictionary are from Malet, but it seems to go back to around the time of the Revolution. There doesn't seem to be any obvious connection to the Welsh Merched Beca of the 1840s.) ( )