David D. Downie
Many of you know me as a food, wine and travel writer, a benign curmudgeon who scours the big cities and back roads of France and Italy in search of the authentic and unadulterated. My latest effort—with striking photography by Alison Harris—is Food Wine Burgundy, the third of our books in the Terroir Guides series. See below for details.
Food and wine are my staples, but I’ve also authored my first novel of suspense, an authentic, unadulterated work of my imagination: Paris City of Night.
Do you have a favorite thriller? A book, movie or episode from a TV show that still makes you shudder or sweat decades after you first read or saw it? Hitchcock’s The Thirty-Nine Steps or Strangers on a Train, do that to me. I grew up with Hitchcock on the brain, watching his films over and over, and reading Hammett, Chandler and a dozen other entertaining but subversively serious writers of genre fiction, including the great Graham Greene (The Third Man!). My favorite books in the genre are psychological and political thrillers, where the crime and violence play minor roles, serving primarily to feed a mounting tension. Paris City of Night aspires to that ideal. I hope the book makes you sweat—the ultimate measure of success. Thanks for visiting, and happy, compulsive reading!
-David D. Downie
Welcome!
David Downie is a native San Franciscan who moved to Paris and now divides his time between France and Italy. His travel, food and arts features appear in magazines and newspapers worldwide. He is the author of many nonfiction books and two thrillers, most recently Paris City of Night.
As the prestigious Library Journal puts it in a Starred Review, "Downie… calls readers to arms by celebrating the terroir (literally “terrain”) and how it, along with the particular climates, has created culinary jewels for millennia—snails, Charolais beef, chèvre, honey, truffles, and grand cru pinot noirs and chardonnays. He easily demystifies the processes of wine making and the distinction and variety of Burgundy’s regional productions… VERDICT: Beautifully depicted, handily sized, and substantially sourced for contact info and seasonal hours… a regional standard for oenophiles and the palatably enchanted traveler. Highly recommended."
More information here
The Chicago Tribune appears to agree: "This marvelous book’s content and photographs are lovely to look at but also full of substance. Author David Downie encourages readers to appreciate a slower, more meditative lifestyle based on a culture with deep roots that respects
the soil and the seasons’ turnings. Indeed, Downie insists that "depth" is the key to understanding Burgundy itself; each of its subregions has a distinctive history and character that, in turn, are reflected in its food and wine…."
More information here >>
"A fast-moving, atmospheric thriller. Best to start reading this one early in the evening... unless, that is, you don't mind losing a night's sleep!" —David Hunt, best-selling author of The Magician's Tale
"Unputdownable——a real page-turner. No one should miss this." —Anton Gill, author of the world best-selling series The Egyptian Mysteries
Paris is alluring and seductive, but by no means benign, as Jay Grant well knows. Orange alerts make people trigger-happy. Red and black alerts are worse. They transform the City of Light into a hellish City of Night...
June 18, 1950: The blurry image of escaping Nazi war criminal Adolf Eichmann wells up in a CIA darkroom in pre-dawn Paris.
December 26, 2007: Madeleine Adelaïde de Lafayette, celebrated Résistance and Free French hero, former CIA deputy chief of station in Paris, is found dead in her mansion fronting the Eiffel Tower. Few know she was a key player in the misguided Allied effort to fight Communism by smuggling Nazis to freedom. So was William Grant, Madeleine’s favorite operative, also recently deceased.
December 28, 2007: As the countdown to New Year’s Eve flashes from the top of the Eiffel Tower, vintage photography and Daguerreotype expert Jay Grant, "son of a spook," races to piece together a deadly picture-puzzle. Why were Madeleine and his father William murdered——and whose side is the CIA really on? Someone is trying to kill Jay before he can crack a code embedded on a set of Daguerreotype plates and flush out terrorists plotting to attack Paris. Persuing Jay through the menacingly dark City of Light are a shadowy recycled Cold Warrior, a sexy Homeland Security officer, and his father William's aged, fanatic former colleague, a man whose mission is no longer beating the Commies but battling radical Islam, even if it means destroying parts of the city he loves...
“A wild ride through the dark side of Paris.”——Diane Johnson
NEWS
FIND DAVID ON:
