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bbrien 's review for:
The Black Tower
by Louis Bayard
The mystery at the heart of this book unfolds gently, told as a narrative in the first person and viewed through rose colored glasses, though it is surrounded by the aftermath of the French revolution. Why was an unknown man murdered on his way to visit Hector Carpentier? Hector is a young man - a nobody, not quite a doctor, living not quite in poverty at the boarding house run by his mother out of the house they can barely afford - when he is overtaken by this mystery, and Vidocq, the charismatic criminal turned detective who takes every crime in Paris personally.
As Vidocq and Hector investigate the murder - Hector pulled along unwillingly, not knowing how to assert himself enough to escape Vidocq's influence - the pieces of the puzzle appear almost providentially, plucked from thin air by the slightly unreal detective. The dead man (first of many, as with any good murder mystery) was a loyalist, and believed that Hector could provide proof of the identity of the missing boy king, Louis XVII, believed to have died during the revolution.
Part police procedural, part alternate history, this book explores the possibility that Louis XVII had been saved; it pits Hector and Vidocq against criminals, nobles, republicans, and kings, as they struggle to save themselves and finally find an answer to the question of what happened in the black tower where Louis-Charles was imprisoned.
As Vidocq and Hector investigate the murder - Hector pulled along unwillingly, not knowing how to assert himself enough to escape Vidocq's influence - the pieces of the puzzle appear almost providentially, plucked from thin air by the slightly unreal detective. The dead man (first of many, as with any good murder mystery) was a loyalist, and believed that Hector could provide proof of the identity of the missing boy king, Louis XVII, believed to have died during the revolution.
Part police procedural, part alternate history, this book explores the possibility that Louis XVII had been saved; it pits Hector and Vidocq against criminals, nobles, republicans, and kings, as they struggle to save themselves and finally find an answer to the question of what happened in the black tower where Louis-Charles was imprisoned.