Lorraine Evanoff — Pinot Noir: An International Banking Spy Thriller (A Louise Moscow Novel Book 2 (21 October 2019).

Lorraine Evanoff and her 2019 novel, „Pinot Noir“, have my highest recommendation.

I love „Pinot Noir,“ and will read the work of Lorraine Evanoff again and repeatedly!

Lorraine Evanoff here, in „Pinot Noir,“ creates a work of mystery that uncovers revolting underworld depravity, but the exposure is only enough for the reader to understand what had occurred without becoming unduly morbid. Meanwhile, the reader encounters a wide-range of human nature, some generous and self-giving, even heroic and redemptive, much that is the warmth of human love, and very much pride and love of tradition. There is great beauty in the novel. Ms. Evanoff is unsentimental, and her writing is to the bone and reveals human nature.

The background of „Pinot Noir,“ the middle of the author‘s Louise Moscow trilogy of novels, is the money-laundering scandal that broke into a financial crisis and the dissolution in July 1991 of the BCCI, the Bank of Credit and Commerce International.

Lorraine Evanoff has mature wisdom about human nature, enriched by her fluency in French, together with her mastery of history and mediaeval lore, which enables Ms. Evanoff to speak through a wide variety of fully enfleshed persons, who inhabit her Louise Moscow trilogy of novels.

The reader lives in this world, which explores a full range of human nature— the innocent, the common person (decent, loving) and the utterly depraved and revolting — in symbolism redolent of the Divine Comedy in Paradise (Caribbean), Purgatory (the monkish self-flagellants), and the Underworld (sometimes literally in a Cave) with Father Dis (Pluto or Hades).

Ms. Evanoff is well-researched in Mediaeval history and lore, with one scene reminiscent of St. Benedict jumping on thorns to still his concupiscence for a beautiful woman!

Medieval history and the Parcifal and Nibelung legends being very much a part of my own lore, „Pinot Noir“ taught me very much, indeed, about such lore in French Burgundy!

The characters are full-flesh humans with whom the reader can understand at a deep level of sympathy and attraction, with the exception of a very few persons whose inner depravity comes in full revolting view. Although nothing is glossed over, the reader is given enough information to appreciate the horrors of the scene, without unduly dwelling upon violence. In the tradition of the best literature, the reader is given enough information, but the whole concentration focuses on some good, and many decent persons, whom we get to know and deeply care for.

As is my own gift, I read each phase of „Pinot Noir“ with great care, and still Ms. Evanoff — who ties all plots symmetrically — shocked me with the novel‘s denouement. I was surprised at how much I did not see coming!

A virtuosic resolution!

I absolutely will not give any spoilers.

But the novel deserves a full review, which I will here endeavor.

Pinot Noir“ the novel reflects Lorraine Evanoff‘s experience with persons of different levels of society on America‘s Eastern seaboard, in the Caribbean, in Monaco, France and the Low Countries, in particular Belgium, where she seems at home both in Wallonia ( Francophone) and Flanders (where of course a major dialect of Dutch, Flemish, is spoken).

As a matter of background, my own Mom was Walloon, so I know much from my childhood about Wallonia and France, and I must say this:

Lorraine Evanoff gives a true voice to the villages and voices of those areas, hitting nuances of personality I know quite well.

Lorraine Evanoff‘s voice in „Pinot Noir“ is close to that of the Walloon villager, and I love that.

My own reading concentrates on the great psychological novels of Fyodor Mikhailovich Dostoevsky and Stendal.

In this vein, what highly attracts me to „Pinot Noir“ was Lorraine Evanoff’s authenticity. Ms. Evanoff writes from a position of depth and integrity. Ms. Evanoff‘s French fluency has enabled her to relate to persons of widely different cultures and to appreciate each individual at a highly personal level that brings her novel characters to life.

Lorraine Evanoff has a voice that rings true; she has an author‘s absolute mastery of the history and the full culture of the persons and places; she has delightful and perfect timing in unfolding the hidden thorns; and the symmetry and completeness, historically informed, of her plots is worthy, I think of Agatha Christie.

In short, I love her work!