City of light, city of poison : murder, magic, and the first police chief of Paris

Author

Holly Tucker

Call Number

• 363.2092 T892 (CEN, OSH)

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Edition

First edition.

Publication Information

New York : W.W. Norton & Company, [2017]

Physical Description

xxiii, 310 pages, 16 unnumbered pages of plates : illustrations, map ; 25 cm

Summary

Nicolas de La Reynie, appointed by Louis XIV as the first police chief of Paris, pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city, unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests, and discovers that the distance between the quiet backstabbing world of the king's court and the criminal underground is disturbingly short. As he continues his investigations, La Reynie suspects that Louis's mistresses are involved in many of the nefarious plots he has uncovered, and he must decide just how far he will go to protect his king. Tucker has crafted a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie's notebooks, letters, and diaries.

Contents

• A note on currency
• Burn notice
• Crime capital of the world
• City of light
• The street at the end of the world
• To market
• Agitation without disorder
• The dew and the torrent
• The door marked 1
• "He will ... strangle me"
• The golden viper
• "Madame is dying, madame is dead!"
• Poison in the pie
• An alchemist's last words
• The faithful servant
• "Brinvilliers is in the air"
• House of porcelain
• Offering
• "The sneakiest and meanest woman in the world"
• "Burn after reading"
• Dinner guests
• The question
• Monsters
• Quanto
• Search and seizure
• A noble pair
• The burning chamber
• "Beginning to talk"
• Fortune-teller
• "From one fire to another"
• The poisoner's daughter
• Sacrifices
• "A strange agitation"
• Lock and key.