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Gray Paree
1940 – The City of Lights has gone dark, and Nazi oppression crushes the land of Liberty, Fraternity, and EqualityAmerican Oliver Carmichael loves his life in Paris, playing in a night club jazz band, and enjoying the freedom and intellectual stimulation of his bohemian set of friends. His happiness is tempered by unresolved feelings for his ex-fiancée, Lisette, especially after he sees her with another man–but he tends those wounds with an affair with an older woman…and also with the boy next door.His life is turned upside down when the Germans march into Paris, and several of his friends join the resistance. When an officer from the American Embassy, Frank Dryden, asks Oliver to keep tabs on his friends’ resistance activities, Oliver is torn. What is the best way to help his friends? What is the right thing to do? Once in, there is no way out. As the Gestapo and their allies in the French police close in, can Oliver save his friends without losing his own life or freedom? And just when it seems he will lose Lisette forever, Marcel offers Oliver an alternative–if they survive.Set in German-occupied Paris during the early years of World War II, Gray Paree is the story of an American expat’s struggle to reconcile with the love of his life, resist tyranny, and do what is right. If you enjoy Alan Furst's Night Soldiers novels, but like to see LGBT characters, then you'll love Gray Paree.
- GenresHistorical Fiction
477 pages, Kindle Edition
First published October 25, 2020
4 people are currently reading
31 people want to read
About the author
Garrett Hutson
12 books30 followersGarrett Hutson writes upmarket historical fiction driven by characters who are moving and unforgettable. Whether it's a murder mystery, a thrilling spy novel, or an adventurous and swoon-worthy romance, his books will make you feel something.
Garrett lives in Indianapolis with his husband, their partner, three adorable dogs, an odd-ball cat, and more fish than you can count.
You can usually find him reading about history, and day-dreaming about being there. This is where his stories are born, and he hopes they transport you the way his imagination transports him.
Look for him on Facebook (Garrett Hutson Author) and Twitter (@GarrettBHutson). You can contact him or sign up for his monthly newsletter on his website at www.garretthutson.com.
Garrett lives in Indianapolis with his husband, their partner, three adorable dogs, an odd-ball cat, and more fish than you can count.
You can usually find him reading about history, and day-dreaming about being there. This is where his stories are born, and he hopes they transport you the way his imagination transports him.
Look for him on Facebook (Garrett Hutson Author) and Twitter (@GarrettBHutson). You can contact him or sign up for his monthly newsletter on his website at www.garretthutson.com.
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
October 25, 2020
Gray Paree transports us a to free-spirited, artistic quarter of 1940s Paris just as the Germans close in and take over the city. Oliver Carmichael is an American musician who discovers how fragile his beautiful, shimmering vision of the City of Light could be, and he realizes he must do something about the growing darkness.
The beauty of Paris comes to life in this well-paced, cinematic novel that the shows us the dread and fear of authoritarian take-over, and the spark of rebellion that springs to life in dark times. Pre-war Paris was a haven not just for artists, musicians and writers but also the LGBT community that found relative safety and love in La Ville Lumière.
The beauty of Paris comes to life in this well-paced, cinematic novel that the shows us the dread and fear of authoritarian take-over, and the spark of rebellion that springs to life in dark times. Pre-war Paris was a haven not just for artists, musicians and writers but also the LGBT community that found relative safety and love in La Ville Lumière.
October 25, 2020
Historical fiction can be hit or miss for me, but Garrett Hutson’s new WWII spy thriller definitely hit! It follows Oliver, an American musician, as the romantically bohemian life he has cultivated in France is up-ended by the Nazi occupation. It’s dark, sexy, and very personal—even as the world crumbles, the relationships remain a focal point that centers the complex ways that people respond to crisis.
The story is suspenseful and riveting until the very end. It has an incredible sense of place and time; you really feel like you’re there with Oliver and his bohemian friends as they navigate their frightening new reality. I recommend this book to anyone to anyone who wants to see WWII fiction from a fresh perspective: the delightfully “dangerous” perspective of a bunch of queer artists and intellectuals. It’s a deeply human perspective that will stick with me for a long time.
The story is suspenseful and riveting until the very end. It has an incredible sense of place and time; you really feel like you’re there with Oliver and his bohemian friends as they navigate their frightening new reality. I recommend this book to anyone to anyone who wants to see WWII fiction from a fresh perspective: the delightfully “dangerous” perspective of a bunch of queer artists and intellectuals. It’s a deeply human perspective that will stick with me for a long time.
October 25, 2020
I was fortunate to get an advance copy of this book and I could not put it down. Set in France in 1940, our main character, Oliver, must navigate through personal and work relationships; while facing the ever increasing danger that the German occupation in France is having both on his life and those he cares for. I found myself anxiously awaiting the fate of the characters and was definitely surprised at the end. Highly recommend!
November 29, 2020
Well written spy novel with believable characters and an engaging plot. This was my first novel from Garrett Hutson and I look forward to reading more.
October 30, 2020
An interesting perspective
I really enjoyed getting to know the characters and their relationships and the bohemian version of 1940s Paris they inhabited. A fascinating and engaging perspective on the period.
I really enjoyed getting to know the characters and their relationships and the bohemian version of 1940s Paris they inhabited. A fascinating and engaging perspective on the period.
October 25, 2020
Gray Paree by Garrett Hutson, a spy thriller set in early World War II Paris, encompasses a full cast of young men and women caught up in German-occupied Paris in the early years of World War II. At their center is trumpet player Oliver Carmichael, an American who plays hot jazz nightly at Le Chien Errant and finds himself tangled in the nascent resistance movement.
The author knows the geography of Paris as well as its history. You can hear the jackboots echo through the city as he brings the reader along from bohemian digs to intrigue and back-alley escapes. The story plays like a movie, picking up speed as the stakes are raised and Oliver gets deeper into danger.
Note to readers: In Gray Paree, Hutson depicts the bohemian subculture in Paris of the time, including explicit sexual encounters and, as he explains in a historical note, “the well-documented bisexual culture of Paris’s Quartier Latin.”
The author knows the geography of Paris as well as its history. You can hear the jackboots echo through the city as he brings the reader along from bohemian digs to intrigue and back-alley escapes. The story plays like a movie, picking up speed as the stakes are raised and Oliver gets deeper into danger.
Note to readers: In Gray Paree, Hutson depicts the bohemian subculture in Paris of the time, including explicit sexual encounters and, as he explains in a historical note, “the well-documented bisexual culture of Paris’s Quartier Latin.”
January 24, 2026
4.5 Stars Rounded Up
Gray Paree’s Gray Paree, set primarily in World War II Paris, is both chilling and, unfortunately, all too timely.
Most readers will wonder if anything is ever going to happen during the first 15% of the novel while a cast of multiple characters is introduced. But once that exercise is complete the remainder of Hutson’s book is as well constructed as it is mesmerizing.
Many of the characters in this novel are gay, but this is not a book filled with gratuitous sex scenes. On the contrary it’s a deeply moving story of the depths of mans’ inhumanity to man and the heights of mans’ resilience in times of great uncertainty.
Gray Paree’s Gray Paree, set primarily in World War II Paris, is both chilling and, unfortunately, all too timely.
Most readers will wonder if anything is ever going to happen during the first 15% of the novel while a cast of multiple characters is introduced. But once that exercise is complete the remainder of Hutson’s book is as well constructed as it is mesmerizing.
Many of the characters in this novel are gay, but this is not a book filled with gratuitous sex scenes. On the contrary it’s a deeply moving story of the depths of mans’ inhumanity to man and the heights of mans’ resilience in times of great uncertainty.
November 14, 2020
NOTE: This book was provided by the author for the purpose of a review on Rainbow Book Reviews.
Spring 1940. The young American Oliver has been living in Paris, France, for some years now and is working as a trumpet player in a jazz band in Le Chien Errant, one of the cabarets up in the Pigalle district near Montmartre. Ever since his fiancée Lisette has broken up with him, he has the impression of living a life put on hold. Luckily, he has quite a lot of friends on the same block of the bohème 5th arrondissement where he’s living: enigmatic Sebastien, hot-headed Serge, tomboy Adrienne, sweet Madeleine, Colette the hapless actress, Marie-France, and the young waiter Marcel, with whom Oliver enjoys an off-and-on sexual affair. Apart from his bleeding heart, Oliver has to admit that life in Gay Paris is easy and light, even if no one has any money to speak of. Everybody has a lover or two, it seems, no matter the sex, and problems are solved by a simple, typically Gallic shrug more often than not. Of course, many worry about France’s cumbersome neighbor, the German Reich, and about chancellor Hitler’s saber-rattling and belliquose stance. France and Germany are at war since the Germans invaded Poland the year before, after all, but it’s a “drôle de guerre”, a Phoney War, with no military action between the warring countries to speak of. Memories of the nefarious Great War are still in everybody’s minds, and the quarreling French political elite doesn’t reassure anybody as to what the future might hold.
Yet when the German troops invade France via neutral Belgium, it comes as an immense shock. Soldiers are rushed to the front to defend the country, but they’re overrun in no time. The Germans reach Paris, occupy half of France, and every person’s lives and destinies go helter-skelter. Some like Colette, the actress, and Lisette, Oliver’s former fiancée, become collaborators, almost despite themselves. Others like Sebastien and Serge are openly hostile to the new fascist Vichy regime under Marshall Pétain that nominally runs the country. As to Oliver, he is approached by an obscure officer working for the US embassy, Frank Dryden, who asks the young man if he could gather intelligence about eventual resistance movements within the young bohemian circle around him. Reluctantly Oliver accepts the mission, only to discover that the new regime jeopardizes everything he believes in: freedom, lawfulness, solidarity, love, and friendship. He immediately decides he cannot remain a simple observer but has to help France shake off its oppressors so that it becomes the land of freedom, equality, and fraternity again. Even if that decision means his life might be in danger…
I don’t know whether I would define this novel as a gay novel if asked, but the definition of what constitutes gay literature is somewhat moot, anyway, and not one I care for. All right, the main character Oliver is anything but gay, pining for his lost love Lisette throughout the book (well, lost… no, no spoilers coming from this reviewer!), and I’m not even sure I’d call him bisexual. He’s fooling around with an older, married, well-off woman, and sometimes having fun with Marcel the same way everybody around him seems to be sleeping with anybody else, and he remains completely oblivious to Marcel’s growing feelings for him. But there are plenty of other LGBT+-characters in the book to justify its inclusion on this site. Moreover, it’s a real page-turner with an overall likeable cast, a book I can recommend without a moment’s hesitation, so there.
Oliver comes across at first as a naïve young American who most of the time doesn’t have many clues as to what is going on around him. He has been living in France for long enough to know why people react in very different ways from what he was used to experience back in the USA, but he is incapable himself of imitating them. He is still at heart a big-eyed, handsome, candid young man who relishes the atmosphere of insouciance of the sparkling city around him. His loyalty to his friends, even to the girl he seems to have lost forever, Lisette, remains one of his best features; all in all, I found him very endearing, and his comparisons between the American way of doing things versus the French way were rather astute and for me, another foreigner living in Paris, quite amusing.
The whole cast of characters, by the way, who take turns telling the story in third person, had something I could relate to and which made me like them (bar the Germans and the French collaborationist police inspector, that is). The plot progresses at a brisk, relentless pace, or maybe I got that impression because I was rushing through the book, impatient to find out what would be happening next. Apart from certain errors in French that could have easily been avoided had the book been proofread by a native speaker, the writing was good, solid, with just enough descriptions and frills to make it engaging and colorful. The author knows what he’s doing when he picks up his quill, so to say, and seems to have researched the time and place where the novel is set with much care for details. The story is well constructed, with an ending that made me wish there would be a follow-up (which I doubt). Really a great, breath-taking read about a gloomy era.
Spring 1940. The young American Oliver has been living in Paris, France, for some years now and is working as a trumpet player in a jazz band in Le Chien Errant, one of the cabarets up in the Pigalle district near Montmartre. Ever since his fiancée Lisette has broken up with him, he has the impression of living a life put on hold. Luckily, he has quite a lot of friends on the same block of the bohème 5th arrondissement where he’s living: enigmatic Sebastien, hot-headed Serge, tomboy Adrienne, sweet Madeleine, Colette the hapless actress, Marie-France, and the young waiter Marcel, with whom Oliver enjoys an off-and-on sexual affair. Apart from his bleeding heart, Oliver has to admit that life in Gay Paris is easy and light, even if no one has any money to speak of. Everybody has a lover or two, it seems, no matter the sex, and problems are solved by a simple, typically Gallic shrug more often than not. Of course, many worry about France’s cumbersome neighbor, the German Reich, and about chancellor Hitler’s saber-rattling and belliquose stance. France and Germany are at war since the Germans invaded Poland the year before, after all, but it’s a “drôle de guerre”, a Phoney War, with no military action between the warring countries to speak of. Memories of the nefarious Great War are still in everybody’s minds, and the quarreling French political elite doesn’t reassure anybody as to what the future might hold.
Yet when the German troops invade France via neutral Belgium, it comes as an immense shock. Soldiers are rushed to the front to defend the country, but they’re overrun in no time. The Germans reach Paris, occupy half of France, and every person’s lives and destinies go helter-skelter. Some like Colette, the actress, and Lisette, Oliver’s former fiancée, become collaborators, almost despite themselves. Others like Sebastien and Serge are openly hostile to the new fascist Vichy regime under Marshall Pétain that nominally runs the country. As to Oliver, he is approached by an obscure officer working for the US embassy, Frank Dryden, who asks the young man if he could gather intelligence about eventual resistance movements within the young bohemian circle around him. Reluctantly Oliver accepts the mission, only to discover that the new regime jeopardizes everything he believes in: freedom, lawfulness, solidarity, love, and friendship. He immediately decides he cannot remain a simple observer but has to help France shake off its oppressors so that it becomes the land of freedom, equality, and fraternity again. Even if that decision means his life might be in danger…
I don’t know whether I would define this novel as a gay novel if asked, but the definition of what constitutes gay literature is somewhat moot, anyway, and not one I care for. All right, the main character Oliver is anything but gay, pining for his lost love Lisette throughout the book (well, lost… no, no spoilers coming from this reviewer!), and I’m not even sure I’d call him bisexual. He’s fooling around with an older, married, well-off woman, and sometimes having fun with Marcel the same way everybody around him seems to be sleeping with anybody else, and he remains completely oblivious to Marcel’s growing feelings for him. But there are plenty of other LGBT+-characters in the book to justify its inclusion on this site. Moreover, it’s a real page-turner with an overall likeable cast, a book I can recommend without a moment’s hesitation, so there.
Oliver comes across at first as a naïve young American who most of the time doesn’t have many clues as to what is going on around him. He has been living in France for long enough to know why people react in very different ways from what he was used to experience back in the USA, but he is incapable himself of imitating them. He is still at heart a big-eyed, handsome, candid young man who relishes the atmosphere of insouciance of the sparkling city around him. His loyalty to his friends, even to the girl he seems to have lost forever, Lisette, remains one of his best features; all in all, I found him very endearing, and his comparisons between the American way of doing things versus the French way were rather astute and for me, another foreigner living in Paris, quite amusing.
The whole cast of characters, by the way, who take turns telling the story in third person, had something I could relate to and which made me like them (bar the Germans and the French collaborationist police inspector, that is). The plot progresses at a brisk, relentless pace, or maybe I got that impression because I was rushing through the book, impatient to find out what would be happening next. Apart from certain errors in French that could have easily been avoided had the book been proofread by a native speaker, the writing was good, solid, with just enough descriptions and frills to make it engaging and colorful. The author knows what he’s doing when he picks up his quill, so to say, and seems to have researched the time and place where the novel is set with much care for details. The story is well constructed, with an ending that made me wish there would be a follow-up (which I doubt). Really a great, breath-taking read about a gloomy era.
January 9, 2022
A promising premise but poorly delivered. Stereotype, two-dimensional characters with oh so clunky dialogue. The first and the last I've read by this author.
January 27, 2026
Exciting tale that puts you right in occupied Paris with fluid identities & relationships, Nazi oppression, intrigue & resistance, while unfortunately leaving me hanging a bit off a cliff at the end.
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews