TG: When did you first go to Paris?
CB: In 1971. I was traveling to Europe, I was young and I was hitchhiking around. I met Romain Gary (author of Promise at Dawn and winner of the Prix Goncourt as Emile Ajar) and slept at his home. He was suing Newsweek for claiming that his wife (Jean Seberg) had been pregnant by a Black Panther. We went to his apartment on the Rue de Bac. He took us for a coffee and smoked a huge cigar and yelled about Newsweek, but it was pretty cool.

TG: How did you connect with him?
CB: I had written him a letter. I really liked his work. So he sent me his address.

TG: When did the idea to write a book set in Paris occur to you?
CB: It started in 1984 when I went to Paris and stayed with my girlfriend Sara whose mother had some of the experiences I write about in the Marais. Sara took me to there. And just picture the Marais before gentrification. She said, "I'm going show you a place most people don't go. I remember walking around and thinking that this place is so different. So many of the hotels (large 16th century mansions) like the Carnavalet and what is now the Picasso Museum were a mess and she said that her mother used to live in one. Whole families lived in these rooms with huge ceilings to keep warm. She told me that one day her mother came back from school and everyone was gone; all their bags were gone and they never came back. But she had no where else to go. She had no identity card because she wasn't sixteen; she didn't have a ration card-she didn't know what to do. But the concierge helped her, unlike in my story.

TG: When did you write Murder in the Marais?
CB: I went back in 1994. My son was five and I remember walking around the Place de Vosges after I put my son to bed and the whole story came back to me. I remember getting on the plane back to San Francisco and thinking-oh God! After waking up at home completely jet lagged I sat down at the computer and it came.

TG: This was your first book. Had you been writing before?
CB: I had been working on a mystery. I had started taking a fiction class at UC Extension, a mystery writing class. I had never thought about writing about Paris-it just came out.

TG: Where did Aimée Leduc come from?
CB: She is her own person but she comes from many people. I couldn't write as a Frenchwoman because I'm not French. (Aimée is half French, half American). She's neither fish nor fowl. She doesn't belong in French society and she doesn't belong in American society. Her father was a flic (cop) her mother left the family. She's kind of out there.

TG: When you sat down to write the story why wasn't Aimée more conventional; Dior clad, Chanel scented, scarved- très sixieme?
CB: Because I don't know that world. I'm not really comfortable on the Left Bank. I feel better in the Marais, I feel better in Belleville. I feel that I just can't compete and I like the other places. I like the places that people don't go to. I think they're easier to write about, they feel more French to me. Like the Bastille-utterly Parisian to me. Some of the trades are still there. There was this cobbler in the Marais who's in the book because he'd been there since the thirties. He got the shop from his father. What stories he could tell! So there are all of these little places that really are Paris!

TG: Is that how you do your research? You walk into stores and introduce yourself?
CB: I just observe. I pick up on things.

TG: We know the inspiration for the Marais but why Belleville for the second book?
CB: (Before Cara answers my question she has a flash she can't wait to share) Oh! Deluc Detective. I just happened to pass it on he Rue du Louvre and I said I need a detective. It's run by a woman who inherited it from her father and I talked to her and thought she (Aimée) could be here. She could do this. And when I ended the first book the characters kept on living, they didn't stop because the case was over and I thought maybe they'll (her publisher) buy another book. My friend lived in Belleville, a single mom and I stayed with her. She lives in subsidized housing but nice. I'd take her daughter to school. Go the markets. And she said why don't you write about here and how it's so different on the Boulevard de Belleville. There are Sephardics, Ashkenaz, a Syrian butcher. You just sit down on the boulevard, have a mint tea and write about everything that goes by. And it's true. It really is vibrant.

TG: And the new book: Murder in the Sentier. Did you once date a Jewish guy in the rag trade?
CB: I was walking through the Marais and I said I'm not going to take a bus-I'll walk. I was too cheap to buy a ticket. I had to get to the Rue St Denis and then I noticed the buildings and it was just like the Marais before it was gentrified-funky and old. I walked on to St Denis and saw the hookers. But you gotta hand it to them. They're out there working in the cold. I really feel for them. They don't have Les Halles any more and these computer people are moving into Silicon Sentier. So I imagine it's hard. But I thought this place is amazing! It's central Paris; it's really historic; it's really funky.

TG: Congratulations and I look forward to hearing about the 4th Aimée Leduc investigation at a future event.

I didn't have long to wait. I boarded a plane for Paris later that week and just three weeks later at a San Francisco reception for author Thad Carhart, Cara proudly proclaimed that book #4, set in the Bastille would be available in Spring 2003.