There's a small cafe

There are writers who believe strongly in the first draft. For them, the story flows out all at once and should not be held back for research or revisions.

I'm not one of them. I revise as I go anyhow, and for the kind of thing I'm doing in the Athena Fox series, I am totally comfortable with delving into the deep research only when I've gotten to the scene in question. Of course the opening scene here sets the stage rather literally; a place that she will return to over and over through the book and two characters who will play pivotal roles.

Montmartre was a given. I stayed there myself. After a lot of poking around, I settled on the Place du Tertre as the location for the opening scene: this is the square full of artists (who are rather less Bohemian than it might be expected, having to be officially approved to dare create art in front of the buying public.) And it is smack dab in tourist central; being, among other things, directly below Sacre Couer.

And the first lampshade is being hung because the young starving artist and the probably-not-a-seamstress young woman meet here, at Cafe la Boheme de Montmartre. Which I do have to name, but otherwise have to be careful about what I say. I can say here that the TripAdvisor reviews are almost unanimously negative on the food and service, (and prices!) but this is a real business that makes much more money than I will ever see and I don't need to be seeing letters from lawyers.

The front-loading here is cafe culture, seasonal weather, basic language, tourist behavior, Parisian street fashion (or, rather, what people wear that will out them instantly as a tourist), Academic seasons (this is, for some institutions, Spring Break), and maybe a bit more.

Well, there's also the Headless Monk.

My other legal disappointment at this juncture is Colette. She is so incredibly quotable. Here she is, as a young bride, returning to her rooms alone as Willy worked; "...where she enjoyed...the leisure of a prisoner and the rest of an invalid."

Colette is probably out of copyright. Sadly, she wrote in French, and the translations are not (I ran into the same problem with quoting from Verdi operas; I could quote the libretto but I had to make my own unique render into English.)