It's a highly unusual legal situation
where the author of a piece of fiction is taken to court
because the action takes place in a particular locality,
and the owners of that locality
feel their name has been dragged through the mud.
Yet that's what's happened in the case of Lalie Walker's book,
Aux Malheurs des Dames.
The Marché Saint-Pierre,
where the murder story unfolds,
is a well-known fabric store near Montmartre.
In the book,
staff members go missing as voodoo dolls
are pinned to the walls
and rumours swirl around the behaviour of the shop's managers.
In their plea,
the real-life owners of the Marché Saint-Pierre
say it's a registered trade mark
and that no one can write about it without prior permission.
They say their image has been seriously harmed by the book,
and they want damages of two million euros -
 more than two and a half million dollars.
The author Lalie Walker is mystified.
"If you can't set stories in real-life places," she says,
"then you might as well just give up."