Celine: The Armani Sleuth with “the Underdog Bone”

Celine by Peter Heller was published in 2017.

Our Sleuth: Celine Watkins, 69, is a PI whose family is listed in the Social Register, who grew up partly in New York and partly in Paris. She’s also a sculptor whose work, made of animal and human bones, displays a dark streak.

The Setting: Starts mostly in New York and moves to Colorado and Wyoming in 2012. But we have parallel stories here so there’s movement across time and the country.

The Premise: Celine is in a fragile state, due to the recent deaths of her sisters and the trauma of being in New York during 9/11, when she gets a call from a fellow Sarah Lawrence grad who wants help finding her long-missing father.

My Take: Sign me up for all the Celine novels, if we’re so lucky to get any more. I loved learning about Celine and the life she’s created for herself as she focuses her work on reuniting birth families. The cases are often decades old, the trails long cold, but Celine and her partner/husband Pete, aka The Quiet American, are tenacious and talented.

Celine is a memorable protagonist, one who’s battled her own demons, including alcoholism and a now-kicked smoking habit that’s left her with emphysema. But she’s far from a frail old lady as is made clear when she confronts bikers in a bar and takes out a trained sniper with a single shot. Instead, her experience is shown to be an asset as she unravels this twisty tale that goes all the way up to the highest ranks of federal power.

Themes: Celine is really two stories in one and both center around the bonds of families and the devastating consequences that result when those bonds are broken. We learn how the wealthy and aristocratic Celine came to devote her life to reuniting families while also learning how her client, Gabriela Lamont, coped with losing both parents as a little girl.

Opening Lines:

The call had come while she was at her workbench wiring the naked taxidermic form of an ermine onto a rock, beside the skull of a crow. The plan was to have the skinless ermine looking down on his own hide tacked to the rock. Her sculpture had a distinctive streak. When Celine wasn’t solving cases, she made pieces from anything at hand, which often involved skulls.

Of Note: The author Peter Heller is an award-winning writer of mostly nonfiction outdoorsy adventures who’s also written several acclaimed fiction novels, including The Dog Stars and The River. His writing is lyric and vibrant, and the dedication in Celine is to his own mother, Caroline, described as “Artist, Spiritual Warrior, Private Eye.”

Heads Up: Celine describes, in some parts, children who are unwanted and/or taken from their mothers.