The Perfume Thief by Timothy Schaffert

Doubleday, 368 pages, $27.95

Clementine. An ear-worm of a song about a tragic girl who wore “herring boxes without topses.” A delicious orangey, fruity thing. Winston’s wife. And apparently a marijuana strain.

In “The Perfume Thief,” author Timothy Schaffert introduces us to a 70-something-year-old named Clementine. He is an ex-pat in Paris, but maybe not by choice. He knows a lot about perfume. He was once — and maybe still is — a thief. When he was an active thief, he mostly did commission work for wealthy women who wanted what they couldn’t buy or beg, not that most of them would beg.

At this late stage of life, Clementine feels free to express himself more openly as a queer-and-dear lesbian who has a unique fashion style. At least, he was more forthcoming or outgoing until the incoming Nazis took over Paris in World War II. The Nazis attacked the Parisian life as louche, spoiled, and indulgent. But they are the first to keep the bordellos and cabarets going. They guzzle the wine, as Schaffert portrays them, without knowing anything about French wine. They suck up all that is French and fine for themselves.

Clem meets an older Nazi man, Oskar Voss, when he accepts one last commission to steal a perfume diary. It is not Voss who commissions him; rather, Voss is the mark from whom the journal must be stolen. Voss does not have the book, but he does know of its existence. He wants it. He thinks Clem, in exchange for goods and favors, will help him find it.

Clem’s commission is from the diarist’s daughter, Zoé, a cabaret singer. She is the darling of the Nazi night crowd. The Nazi night crowd does not know she is Jewish. She fears her father, the parfumier, may have written something in the diary to give away her identity. Zoé wants Clementine to steal it. A Nazi officer is besotted by Zoé, so she has access to many people, including Voss. Voss is living in the mansion that belonged to her father. Somewhere in that mansion, it is assumed, lies the diary. Perhaps Zoé has a clue. Perhaps the clue is clueless. Perhaps the perfume maker is an excellent code maker as well, so much so that the secret of his diary will remain hidden.

In getting to know Voss, Clem barters his back story — and part of his soul — to ingratiate himself. Clem tries to poison Voss (sort of, kind of, half-heartedly) and makes a haphazard attempt to locate the diary. He becomes, in the end, Voss’ assistant, companion, and confidante. But he is never Voss’ friend. Through his association with Voss, he gets to know how the treasures of France are being looted — mostly from Jewish families — and how the soul of occupied France is quickly being corrupted. 

For three-fourths of the book, Clem’s story meanders. Schaffert sets up Clem’s relationship with Voss, Clem's past love affair with M, and the cause of his exile in Paris. We meet Clem’s significant friends, most of whom are homosexual, gender fluid, LBGTQ+ before such a designation was a spark in some writer’s brain. They inhabit the demimonde social world. They pander to the Nazis. Some of them pander and also operate in the Resistance. The Resistance is just a whisper for the first three-fourths of the book, but the Resistance is everything in the end.

Voss’ moral dissolution becomes more odious as the story goes on. What exactly does he want from Clem? Is he a good Nazi or a pretentious one?

I read this book very, very slowly. It was Proust-like in its sensory descriptions of Paris, the world of perfume, the sotto voce world of prohibited entertainment. Schaffert’s descriptions should be savored. Here are a few examples:

It was M who gave me my copy of Odorographia, which eventually sent me packing to seek the world’s most impossible scents. The nests of the lost cinnamon birds of the Seychelles. The oil from the bergamot trees felled by the earthquakes of Calabria.

and

The doctored cardamom of a Lingayat priest. The magnolias of Himalaya. The star anise of Japanese temples. Orinoco sassafras.

and

I meet with [the] girls one by one, there in the parlor, to learn more about them, for the perfumes I’ll create. One is allergic to perfume — but somehow I can smell on her skin a late afternoon by the sea, the gentle rock of the boat on mostly still waters, the gin and ginger ale.

Oh, I could go on and on with the imaginative descriptions.

I can’t really call this a mystery, even though I am infamous for labelling books mysteries with lesser excuses. I could say this is a mystery because there are these questions: Where is the journal, and is there even a journal? Is someone murdered? Can one be both a good person and a good thief? Huh. Too many mysteries pile upon each other, but the sum of all that still does not a mystery make. And only the last fourth of the book is even a vague thriller. All of the book is magnificent.