Mysteries of the Great City

Jim Morrison isn't dead; he's alive and well in Paris in the summer of 1985. At least, that's what Teddy and Helen, two young American travelers, are told by a friendly stranger named Natasha who invites them to a party at the singer's house. To get there, they must play a game called Mysteries of the Great City that belongs to Desi Falba. Falba is a drug dealer on the run from both the cops and his boss, the mobster Arthur Venable. When they find Desi, they learn that he's already promised the game to a group of shady characters led by a gruff woman named Loie. Natasha brokers a deal for the two groups to play the game together. The ensuing scavenger hunt, refereed by a team of mysterious judges, takes the players through the dark corners and bright shadows of the City of Light, from the seedy dives of Pigalle and a gritty banlieue to the set of a movie being filmed by the auteur Voltan Tchemnck and the Baroque mansions of the Ile St. Louis. Among other things, they hunt for an old man in a wheelchair, a bracelet made of hair, and an intricate wooden box that they must steal from a bizarre private collection. The game goes well, at first, then takes an ominous turn as the players are stalked by thugs who inflict casualties and force them to escape into the Zone of the Underneath, a subterranean network of abandoned quarries. Both curious marvels and new dangers lie below and spark growing tensions amongst the survivors who learn, much too late for some, that people are not always what they seem and that the game is not a game, but a very serious, and even stranger, business... This gothic neo-noir thriller is Charles Rutheiser's debut novel.