{"id":5847,"date":"2026-10-15T01:00:52","date_gmt":"2026-10-15T01:00:52","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=5847"},"modified":"2026-10-15T21:15:23","modified_gmt":"2026-10-15T21:15:23","slug":"animals-of-the-french-species","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?p=5847","title":{"rendered":"Animals of the French Species"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><span style=\"text-decoration: underline\"><strong>Book of the Week October 15, 2026<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n<p>After the traumatic events of <em>The Wonder Test<\/em>, FBI agent Lina Connerly and her teenage son move from California to Paris, where she is posted to the American Embassy as a liaison between U.S. and French counterintelligence agencies. Mother and son are also dealing with their lingering grief over the death of Lina\u2019s husband in a car accident two years ago. Still, the Paris they find is not a romantic refuge but a gritty and dirty metropolis (\u201cyou can almost smell the French Revolution\u201d). The French present Lina with a 20-year-old unsolved case\u2014the Train Fant\u00f4me\u2014involving the bloody deaths of nine passengers in a single metro car. Could it be connected to a mysterious device found in a tunnel wall, which might be linked to a secret weapons program in Eastern Europe? Covertly, Lina is also tracking an Edward Snowden-like American intelligence agent who leaked classified documents, fled to Russia, and is now rumored to be hiding in France. Her need to find him becomes urgent when her sources start turning up dead. <strong>Richmond skillfully weaves two complex espionage plots into a touching family drama about rebuilding a life after a tragedy.<\/strong> Fascinating spycraft details are mixed with amusing observations about expatriate life and Franco-American cultural differences. Fans of Chris Pavone\u2019s <em>The Expats<\/em> will enjoy this.<em>\u2014Willy Williams<\/em><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Book of the Week October 15, 2026 After the traumatic events of The Wonder Test, FBI agent Lina Connerly and her teenage son move from California to Paris, where she&hellip;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":5846,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_lmt_disableupdate":"","_lmt_disable":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[163,57,81,64,55,52,50,51],"class_list":["post-5847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-article-article","tag-book-of-the-week","tag-domestic","tag-espionage","tag-international","tag-mystery-detective","tag-psychological","tag-suspense","tag-thrillers"],"featured_image_src":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Anim-400x400.jpeg","featured_image_src_square":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/wp-content\/uploads\/formidable\/4\/Anim-400x600.jpeg","author_info":{"display_name":"Chris Kahn","author_link":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/?author=5"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=5847"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5878,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5847\/revisions\/5878"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/media\/5846"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=5847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=5847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/firstcluereviews.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=5847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}