Jane and Phil unwittingly uncover a murderous plot in 1923 Paris and must try to investigate the death of rich American publisher Richard Forsythe without arousing the dangerous ire of his German mistress Sabine Walter Satterthwait writes richly detailed historical mysteries about everyone from Oscar Wilde to Lizzie Borden. In the well-reviewed Escapade , he introduced us to Pinkerton detective Phil Beaumont and his partner, a sharp and seductive Brit named Jane Turner. Masquerade brings this fascinating couple to Paris in 1923, where wealthy American dilettante Richard Forsythe and his German mistress have been found dead. The French police are calling it a double suicide, but Forsythe's mother has hired Beaumont and Turner to dig deeper. In between having amorous alliances, spotting the likes of Gertrude Stein, James Joyce, and Ernest Hemingway on the street, and eating too many rich meals with a French policeman ("One can lead a horse to tournedos Rossini , but one cannot make him eat," this worthy sighs when Phil finally requests a steak, rare, with no sauces), Beaumont and Turner dip into a world of insidious aristocrats and dangerous drug dealers as they find out what really happened. Other Satterthwait pleasures in paperback: Accustomed to the Dark , At Ease with the Dead , Wall of Glass . --Dick Adler Pinkerton operatives Phil Beaumont and Jane Turner (Escapade, St. Martin's, 1995) search for the truth behind the supposed suicides of a rich American publisher and his German mistress in 1923 Paris. A welcome escape to an exciting time and place. Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc. The official verdict on poet/publisher Richard Forsythe and his latest amoureuse, Sabine von Stuben, is that their deaths were the result of a suicide pact in their bolted Paris hotel room. But Richard's mother back in the States doesn't believe the official verdictshe's especially suspicious of the shooting of the hotel desk clerk soon afterwardand she hires the Pinkerton Agency to find out the truth. The Pinkertons, who don't do things by halves, send two operatives, experienced investigator Phil Beaumont, who'll read through police transcripts and question the witnesses, and novice Jane Turner, who'll travel incognito as nanny to Richard's cousins; but the company doesnt tell either one about the other. Since Phil and Jane have already met under other circumstances (Escapade, 1995), various complications ensue. The lazy if high-spirited detective work, however, is constantly upstaged by the cast of dragonish suspectsfrom Richard's man-eating widow to Sabine's former lover to an Agatha Christie look-alike who's been funneling donations to the infant Nazisand a nonstop parade of period cameos that include Ernest (``call me Ernie'') Hemingway (a skirt-chasing poseur), Gertrude Stein (olympian in her vanity), James Joyce, Erik Satie, Juan Gris, Pablo Picasso, Kay Boyle, Robert McAlmon, and some terrific French meals. A decorative, dizzying triflethe locked-room murder is solved with insulting casualnessthats chock-full of the stuff that made the Twenties roar. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved. ...[a] witty pen-in-cheek adventure. -- The New York Times Book Review , Marilyn Stasio