What's the Name of That Book??? discussion

This book was really weird. It starts with a guy and his mom on a plane. There's an emergency landing. They think the plane might crash so he considers yelling out his deep, dark secret: he's been sleeping with his sister.

There's some backstory about his wife divorcing him and moving away with their daughter because she knows something is wrong with his relationship with his super manipulative sister. And he's a total loser. One day he gets a mysterious message from the lawyer of a wealthy European. His daughter has been named the heir of a massive estate and he is the trustee. He goes over to France to figure out what's going on. The deceased man's children are pissed. The son has nefarious connections.

While that family drama is playing out, there are young women being murdered by violent johns. The guy's daughter gets kidnapped and assaulted. The town has nefarious links to the Vichy France regime and Nazis. The rich man died under mysterious circumstances. There's narration from the perspective of an unnamed psycho killer. Lots of corruption in the town. The deadbeat dad is trying to play detective. There's the reluctant but dedicated detective.

Lots of secrets are exposed about the town heroes. During WWII, it's said that they helped a lot of Jews escape persecution but it turns out one of them was super evil and the others helped to cover it up.

The twist ending is that the main character was the son of the wealthy man who died. So he wasn't biologically related to the sister that he was having an affair with. But then he starts having an affair with the new sister. So, that's really normal...

Walking the Shadows by Donald James maybe?

Ayshe's suggestion of Walking the Shadows looks promising.

One Goodreads reviewer says, "Tom Chapel is a middle-aged rich American. He is a philanderer who’s wasted his life doing this and that – including carrying on an incestuous relationship with his sister... Chapel and his awful autocratic mother are on a plane to San Francisco. The plane’s landing gear has failed to drop and the passengers believe that they are about to die. Tom’s mother chooses to announce that Tom is not, as he has believed all this life, the son of the late General J Dwight Chapel... Tom travels to St Juste [a village in France] to discover why a local man, Marcel Coultard left $28 million to his and Elaine’s daughter, Romilly... Marcel’s role in the Resistance during the Second World War. Tom’s search takes him back to when St Juste was ruled by the Vichy government..."

Lucille, was your book "Walking the Shadows" or are you still looking?

No response, moving to Solved.