Black Water Lilies is a murder mystery set in Giverny, the small French village in which Claude Monet lived for the later part of his life and painted most of his famous water lilies. The author claims that his representations of the village and of Monet’s life and art are accurate, and certainly the novel is full of detail on these points, delivered diegetically and otherwise, in much the same way that Tom Clancy or other airport thrillers might provide details of handguns or nuclear submarines. Other key features of the novel include the poetry of Louis Aragon, infidelity, and how American tourists ruin everything. It is, in short, extremely French.