The Black Notebook by Patrick Modiano

From the winner of the Nobel Prize in Literature, a writer's notebook unlocks memories of a love formed and lost in 1960s Paris.
In the aftermath of Algeria's war of independence, Paris was a city rife with suspicion and barely suppressed violence. Amid this tension, Jean, a young writer adrift, met and fell for Dannie, an enigmatic woman fleeing a troubled past. A half century later, with his old black notebook as a guide, he retraces this fateful period in his life, recounting how, through Dannie, he became mixed up with a group of unsavory characters connected by a shadowy crime. Soon Jean, too, was a person of interest to the detective pursuing their case-a detective who would prove instrumental in revealing Dannie's darkest secret.
The Black Notebook bears all the hallmarks of this Nobel Prize-winning literary master's unsettling and intensely atmospheric style, rendered in English by acclaimed translator Mark Polizzotti (Suspended Sentences). Once again, Modiano invites us into his unique world, a Paris infused with melancholy, uncertain danger, and the fading echoes of lost love
"A literary.Simenon. An atmospheric, smoky, sepia-toned whodunit, though more for fans of Camus than Chandler."-Kirkus Reviews
"Modiano's folklore is set out from the beginning.and sheer magic follows once more."-Vogue
"The prose-elliptical, muted, eloquent-falls on the reader like an enchantment.No one is currently writing such beautiful tales of loss, melancholy, and remembrance."-Independent
"Both carefully wrought and superbly fluid, sustained by pure poetry."-Le Monde