First Spring in Paris

In 1946 Daisy and her friend Beatrice decided to move to Paris, because they were fed up with limping London, still crippled and depressed in the aftermath of the war. And indeed, in the spring of that year, Paris was the place to be-isn't it always? In particular, some very interesting things were going on in Saint-Germain-des-Prés: existentialism, free love, and American jazz throbbing through the night in the cellar clubs.Then one day, just as the two were settling into a new life, a little boy stepped forward in the street and said, "Can you come with me? My mummy is all funny." And he led them to a garret where they found his mother's dead body.A very disturbing murder case was thrown in their path, and one thing leading to another, Daisy Hayes, blind sleuth extraordinaire, had to rise to the challenge as never before."As a great admirer of Simenon and his Maigret mysteries, Nick Aaron now introduces the 'Commissaire Divisionnaire' Simonetti from the Parisian 'Brigade Criminelle'. A gentle spoof and a grudging recognition of debt." - The Weekly BannerThis 63k novel is a stand-alone in the Blind Sleuth series:I D for DaisyII Blind Angel of WrathIII Daisy and BernardIV Honeymoon in RioV First Spring in ParisVI The Nightlife of the Blind Nick Aaron is Dutch, but he was born in South Africa (1956), where he attended a British-style boarding school, in Pietersburg, Transvaal. Later he lived in Lausanne (Switzerland), in Rotterdam, Luxembourg and Belgium. He worked for the European Parliament as a printer and proofreader. Currently he's retired and lives in Malines.Recently, after writing in Dutch and French for many years, the author went back to the language of his mid-century South African childhood. A potential global readership was the incentive; the trigger was the character of Daisy Hayes, who asserted herself in his mind wholly formed. Daisy Hayes was born in London in 1922. Her father was a bank manager, hoping for a son, but he had to settle for a blind daughter.Now what do you do when your child is blind since birth and you have the means to do all that is necessary to help her? You hire a private tutor to stimulate her verbal abilities in the first years of her life, because you realize how vital language will become for her. Then you send her to an exclusive school where everything is done to develop the minds and resourcefulness of blind girls. There they teach them all these fancy techniques of spatial orientation and mind mapping. And before you know it, your darling daughter has become a smart female detective who just seems to draw murder mysteries like a magnet…