Please Welcome Novelist John Pearce

by John Pearce

We are delighted to welcome novelist John Pearce as our guest.

John's debut novel, Treasure of Saint-Lazare (Alesia Press, October 2012), is a thriller set in Paris and his hometown of Sarasota, Florida.

Today John introduces us to Eddie Grant, the protagonist of his book, as well as telling us a bit more about the storyline.

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Imagine: You're rich, half-American, living in Paris, and on the way to recovery from that really bad year when the family members closest to you were killed. And back into your life comes a living reminder of that past, one you'd really rather not revisit. But you can't ignore her because for a brief few days she was very important, and she brings a cryptic letter that blows up all the emotional barriers you've erected.

Photo provided courtesy of
John Pearce

And that's the way it was in 2008 for Eddie Grant, the protagonist of my new novel Treasure of Saint-Lazare, a thriller set in Paris and Sarasota, FL. It's a quest novel of the old school — nothing supernatural, nothing unexplainable, no deus ex machina.

Eddie's father Artie, who died in mysterious circumstances in 2001, was one of the American intelligence officers who spent the first years after World War II searching for artworks stolen by the Nazis for the grand museum Hitler planned for Linz, the one he was sure would supplant the Louvre. He and his partner Roy Castor spent years looking for one special painting, a luminous self-portrait by Ralphael, which the Nazis looted from a museum in Poland at the beginning of the war. In 1945 it disappeared in shipment from Poland to southern Germany — or did it?

I've created a world of bad guys, from Nazi sympathizers to the twisted son of a Stasi agent, who will kill without a second thought if it will bring them closer to the painting and the trove of gold bullion they believe is hidden with it.

The story veers from Paris to Sarasota, FL, and back again. It brings Eddie close once again — very close — to Jen Wetzmuller, daughter of Artie's wartime partner, who is just another roadside victim on the evil search for the treasure.

My goal in creating Eddie Grant and the galaxy of characters around him was to fulfill the novelist's classic wish, to show his character's development in response to the surrounding story and in turn the other characters' changes as they are drawn into his quest. At the same time, I wanted to him him the urges and needs everyone has, including his search for a lasting romantic relationship after years of short-term failures.

Treasure of Saint-Lazare was published yesterday (October 8th) as a Kindle Select edition; it will be available as a trade paperback and hardcover book within a few weeks.

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You can learn more about John and his book on his Goodreads author page, follow posts on his blog PartTimeParisian.com, or find him on Twitter.

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Treasure of Saint-Lazare
John Pearce
Publisher: Alesia Press

A letter from his father's World War II colleague in the Monuments Men pulls Eddie Grant reluctantly into a web of intrigue and death and launches him on a dangerous search for the most valuable piece of Nazi loot that remains missing, a famous Raphael self-portrait.

A wealthy French-American businessman and former U.S. Special Forces officer, Eddie is unexpectedly given a chance to solve the murder of his family seven years before. The quest takes him from his Paris home to Sarasota, where his father's wartime colleague has just died under suspicious circumstances. The colleague's daughter Jen, whom he last saw when they had a brief but torrid affair 20 years ago, brings him the cryptic letter. It's the starting gun for a whirlwind chase, ending in Paris, for the painting and the gold bullion that's thought to be with it.