City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris

City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris

by Holly Tucker
City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris

City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris

by Holly Tucker

Hardcover

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$26.95 
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Overview

“A fierce tale of conspiracy and retribution… Thanks to Tucker’s sympathetic necromancy and her luscious resurrection of everyday detail, even in gilded palaces the human psyche seems familiarly deceitful and self-justifying.” —Michael Sims, author of The Story of Charlotte’s Web and Arthur and Sherlock

Appointed to conquer the “crime capital of the world,” the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light.

The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests. As he exposes their unholy work, he soon learns that no one is safe from black magic—not even the Sun King. In a world where a royal glance can turn success into disgrace, the distance between the quietly back-stabbing world of the king’s court and the criminal underground proves disturbingly short. Nobles settle scores by employing witches to craft poisons and by hiring priests to perform dark rituals in Paris’s most illustrious churches and cathedrals.

As La Reynie continues his investigations, he is haunted by a single question: Could Louis’s mistresses could be involved in such nefarious plots? The pragmatic and principled La Reynie must decide just how far he will go to protect his king.

From secret courtrooms to torture chambers, City of Light, City of Poison is a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder. Based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie’s compulsive note-taking, as well as on letters and diaries, Tucker’s riveting narrative makes the fascinating, real-life characters breathe on the page.


Product Details

ISBN-13: 9780393239782
Publisher: Norton, W. W. & Company, Inc.
Publication date: 03/21/2017
Pages: 336
Sales rank: 981,397
Product dimensions: 6.20(w) x 9.20(h) x 1.30(d)

About the Author

Holly Tucker is the author of City of Light, City of Poison and Blood Work, a finalist for the Los Angeles Times Book Prize and the Times Literary Supplement Book of the Year, and is a professor of French at Vanderbilt University. She lives in Nashville, Tennessee, and Aix-en-Provence, France.

Table of Contents

Author's Note xv

A Note on Currency xvii

Burn Notice xix

Part I "Day and Night They Kill Here"

1 Crime Capital of the "World 3

2 City of Light 15

3 The Street at the End of the World 26

4 To Market 35

Part II King of Hearts

5 Agitation without Disorder 43

6 The Dew and the Torrent 50

7 The Door Marked 1 55

8 "He Will … Strangle Me" 61

Part III "She Will Turn Us All into Poisoners"

9 The Golden Viper 69

10 "Madame Is Dying, Madame Is Dead!" 73

11 Poison in the Pie 77

12 An Alchemist's Last Words 80

13 The Faithful Servant 84

14 "Brinvilliers Is in the Air" 90

Part IV "Cease Your Scandals"

15 House of Porcelain 103

16 Offering 111

17 "The Sneakiest and Meanest Woman in the World" 114

18 "Burn after Reading" 121

19 Dinner Guests 126

20 The Question 134

21 Monsters 142

Part V "She Gave Her Soul Gently to the Devil"

22 Quanto 151

23 Search and Seizure 158

24 A Noble Pair 164

25 The Burning Chamber 170

26 "Beginning to Talk" 177

27 Fortune-Teller 185

28 "From One Fire to Another" 195

Part VI Wicked Truths

29 The Poisoner's Daughter 201

30 Sacrifices 209

31 "A Strange Agitation" 217

32 Lock and Key 226

Epilogue 231

Acknowledgments 239

Affair of the Poisons: A Chronology 243

Notes 247

Bibliography 277

Index 297

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