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

Enhanced descriptions from Syndetics:

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.

Table of contents provided by Syndetics

• Author's Note (p. xv)
• A Note on Currency (p. xvii)
• Burn Notice (p. xix)
• Part I "Day and Night They Kill Here"
• 1 Crime Capital of the World (p. 3)
• 2 City of Light (p. 15)
• 3 The Street at the End of the World (p. 26)
• 4 To Market (p. 35)
• Part II King of Hearts
• 5 Agitation without Disorder (p. 43)
• 6 The Dew and the Torrent (p. 50)
• 7 The Door Marked 1 (p. 55)
• 8 "He Will ... Strangle Me" (p. 61)
• Part III "She Will Turn Us All into Poisoners"
• 9 The Golden Viper (p. 69)
• 10 "Madame Is Dying, Madame Is Dead!" (p. 73)
• 11 Poison in the Pie (p. 77)
• 12 An Alchemist's Last "Words (p. 80)
• 13 The Faithful Servant (p. 84)
• 14 "Brinvilliers Is in the Air" (p. 90)
• Part IV "Cease Your Scandals"
• 15 House of Porcelain (p. 103)
• 16 Offering (p. 111)
• 17 "The Sneakiest and Meanest Woman in the World" (p. 114)
• 18 "Burn after Reading" (p. 121)
• 19 Dinner Guests (p. 126)
• 20 The Question (p. 134)
• 21 Monsters (p. 142)
• Part V "She Gave Her Soul Gently to the Devil"
• 22 Quanto (p. 151)
• 23 Search and Seizure (p. 158)
• 24 A Noble Pair (p. 164)
• 25 The Burning Chamber (p. 170)
• 26 "Beginning to Talk" (p. 177)
• 27 Fortune-Teller (p. 185)
• 28 "From One Fire to Another" (p. 195)
• Part VI Wicked Truths
• 29 The Poisoner's Daughter (p. 201)
• 30 Sacrifices (p. 209)
• 31 "A Strange Agitation" (p. 217)
• 32 Lock and Key (p. 226)
• Epilogue (p. 231)
• Acknowledgments (p. 239)
• Affair of the Poisons: A Chronology (p. 243)
• Notes (p. 247)
• Bibliography (p. 277)
• Index (p. 297)

Reviews provided by Syndetics

Library Journal Review

Historian Tucker (French & biomedical ethics & society, Vanderbilt Univ.; Blood Work) uses court records and diaries to reconstruct the Affair of the Poisons, a late 1600s rash of murders by poison with ties to witchcraft. Paris police chief Nicolas de la Reynie picks apart a thread of evidence exposed by torture and intrigue and uncovers a network of conspiracies that ultimately threatens even the life of King Louis XIV. Central to the story is Louis's string of mistresses, who navigate the complicated society of the royal court seeking to gain and retain influence as they rise and fall from favor with the king. Tucker adeptly juggles a wide-ranging cast of characters from Louis's mistresses to fortune-telling con artists to servants of the nobility, painting vivid scenes of interrogation chambers and back-alley plots. VERDICT Recommended for readers who enjoy their history mixed with scandal, blood, and deception. [See Prepub Alert, 9/26/16; "Editors' Picks," p. 28.]-Jason Puckett, Georgia State Univ. Lib, Atlanta © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

Publishers Weekly Review

Tucker (Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Science Revolution) vividly brings to life a slice of Parisian history in this rigorously researched true-crime epic, set during the reign of Louis XIV. The book opens in 1665 with the murder of the city's criminal lieutenant, the public official with jurisdiction over most crimes committed in the city, who was stabbed to death by some inept burglars, followed by the poisoning of one of his colleagues, who resolved civil disputes, a year later. The embarrassment about these deaths led to the appointment of the first police chief of Paris, Nicolas de La Reynie, who began with reforms to literally clean up the filthy streets of the city and to deter nighttime crime with a massive campaign to install thousands of lanterns on most Paris streets. Eventually, he investigated the Affair of the Poisons, a series of crimes involving members of France's high nobility and reaching into the palace. The investigation led to the creation of a secret tribunal that imprisoned hundreds and executed more than 30 people. Although many documents were burned by the king himself after La Reynie's death, Tucker draws on other contemporary records to meticulously reconstruct this fascinating chapter in the annals of true crime. The result reads like a combination of the most compelling mystery fiction and Dumas's romances of twisted court intrigues. (Mar.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.

Booklist Review

A university professor and expert on biomedical ethics, Tucker (Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution, 2011) has unearthed and brought to life a treasure trove of court documents and notes from Paris' first police chief, Nicolas de la Reynie, showing how poison was a longstanding weapon of choice to end political and sexual rivalries in the court of Louis XIV. Although Louis XIV himself fed the incriminating documents into a fire at Versailles immediately after the police chief's death, de la Reynie had made his own notes about The Affair of the Poisons, which Tucker combed through. This history partially focuses on how de la Reynie, who served as police chief from 1667 until his death in 1709, worked to rid Paris of its appalling filth and crime. It also provides stunning insights into the real filth of Louis XIV's reign, gilded, as in the Sun King's creation of Versailles, but rotten with duplicity and murder. Completely absorbing, especially because of the wealth of everyday life detail Tucker provides.--Fletcher, Connie Copyright 2017 Booklist

Author notes provided by Syndetics

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.