Overview: By Way of Paris: A Novel from Christopher J. Newman is the most perfect crime story, and one written from experience, and which introduces a bright new talent to the expertly crafted, written prose scene.

Verdict: Luke’s life in North Carolina sucks until things start to look up when he sets off for a writing program in London, spending the month before his course exploring Europe. But his dream trip quickly derails in Paris after he discovers a body at a party and is blackmailed into hiding the evidence.

Arriving in London, Luke decides that crafting the perfect novel will help him overcome the Paris catastrophe. He befriends Shane, a gang leader, and shadows a band of criminals as research for his manuscript. Luke finds a family with the young gang, but this new world is filled with violence and toxic masculinity, which strains his academic career, eventually entangling him in the London underworld as he embarks on a slew of crimes, making dangerous enemies along the way.

When friends start dying and detectives begin calling, Luke is forced back to France, realizing that he’s not the hero of his own story. Searching for an ending that could free his friends from Shane, Luke wants to bring justice to the murder that happened … by way of Paris.

In what is a most intelligently, well crafted, dutifully alluring new novel from author Christopher J. Newman, By Way of Paris is a page turner of the highest order. Something of which I can personally myself attest to, as I read it cover-to-cover in just three days (well, two and a half, in truth).

Complete with engaging character developments, along with realistic dialogue and highly descriptive settings that create a veritably sweeping inner mind cinescape of visual integrity to further afford the reader their very own inventive landscape for the characters to evolve within (especially those of both France and England, the latter I am a countryman of and therefore can attest to all that is brought forth), Christopher’s debut novel is both gripping and entertaining; if not a little quirkily left of script center sometimes, but hey, that just adds to its overall charm).

About the Author - Christopher J. Newman is a thriller writer. He prefers to write novels from the criminal perspective and to make readers fall (guiltily) in love with bad characters who do bad things. He lives in Raleigh, NC.

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