London Bookclub: ScentSational Books - where scent meets story

This is our third book choice at ScentSational Books and we shall be meeting on Tuesday 24th March at 6.30pm, in the historic setting of Ye Olde Cheshire Cheese, on Fleet Street.

Join us for relaxed chat about The Perfume Thief - Timothy Shaffert, it's themes of identity, espionage, subterfuge, fragrance and romance; symbology, a diverse palette of intriguing characters and of course the evocative scent language used!

A stylish, sexy page-turner set in Paris on the eve of World War II, where Clementine, a queer American ex-pat and notorious thief, is drawn out of retirement and into one last scam when the Nazis invade.
Clementine is a seventy-two-year-old reformed con artist with a penchant for impeccably tailored suits. Her life of crime has led her from the uber-wealthy perfume junkies of belle epoque Manhattan, to the scented butterflies of Costa Rica, to the spice markets of Marrakech, and finally the bordellos of Paris, where she settles down in 1930 and opens a shop bottling her favourite extracts for the ladies of the cabarets.
Now it’s 1941 and Clem’s favourite haunt, Madame Boulette’s, is crawling with Nazis, while Clem’s people—the outsiders, the artists, and the hustlers who used to call it home—are disappearing. Clem’s first instinct is to go to ground—it’s a frigid Paris winter and she’s too old to put up a fight. But when the cabaret’s prize songbird, Zoe St. Angel, recruits Clem to steal the recipe book of a now-missing famous Parisian perfumer, she can’t say no…….

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“Of all the lovers you’ve told me about,“ I say to Day, “of all the lovers you’ve described to me for the perfumes I’ve made, who was your greatest one?” Day has never asked me this. I’ve never told her about M.

Day holds the teacup to her lips, breathing in the steam “Guess,” she says.

I suggest the ballet dance (the scent of talc, sweat, leather, the sharp -our sweet of roses turning to mold), and she says no. I suggest the journalist (typewriter ribbon, a struck match, the tart ash in the owl of a hashish pipe), and she says no to that too. “You’ll never guess, “ she says. “Because I haven’t described him yet.” Ah, I think. She, too, has more to tell. Why would I have suspected anything less?

Know what’s Happening Next — before everyone else does.

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Host or Publisher Tanya Moulding - The Perfume Mistress