The Black Tower: A Novel (P.S.) [Paperback]

Set in the France's Restoration period, this rollicking cloak and dagger adventure novel offers up a tantalizing mix of fiction and fact, a switching of prisoners and a case of mistaken identity that defines the Bourbon regime and the unsteady and senseless experiment between democracy and empire and the royalist and Revolutionary traditions. 18th century Paris is still reeling from the first abdication of Emperor Napoleon I and the return of the Bourbon king, Louis XVIII, when local doctor Hector Carpentier is called upon by Detective Eugène Vidocq to help settle the mystery of Dauphine Louis XVII. When the French government transferred the Dauphine to the fortress called the Temple, his new jailer cruelly mistreated him, stripping him of his title and his dignity, beating and starving him and shutting him away for months. This cruelty combined with the harsh conditions of prison life contributed to his death in 1795. Although his body was examined, the Dauphin was never seen while he was still alive. The authorities also never consulted the Dauphin's sister.

It's not surprising then that rumors have begun to circulate based on a confession that the boy who died in Temple prison and contradicting the official story of his death. As The Black Tower opens, Hector Carpentier finds himself caught up in these rumors. Although his father has been dead for 18 months, Hector has hit upon hard times, losing some undeveloped land through bad speculations and has been forced to care for his mother Beatrice and his sister Charlotte, a series of student boarders keeping the family afloat. Then comes a knock at the door, and the entrance of a stranger, a tiny old cripple from the street corner who suddenly transforms into a strapping man who eats macaroons and raw potatoes and who informs Hector that a man called Chrétien Leblanc was killed on the way to see him.

The man is the legendary figure of Detective Vidocq. Even Hector has heard that his interlocutor can solve any crime on the blink of an eye, especially when it comes to enquiries of an unspeakable urgency. Reluctantly dragged to the morgue by Vidocq, for the first time Hector views the remains of Leblanc and discovers that his fingernails are obscured by the piece of paper which contains Hector's own address and the first time there's the realization that Leblanc was trying to keep the young doctor's murderers at bay.

Acknowledging his responsibilities but still hesitant to trust the wildly unbalanced Vidocq, the young man negotiates with the great detective, the recent events taking them to the rooms of the Baronne de Preval, her once -handsome demeanor now hardened into something unyielding and curatorial, "like the tablet of a lost civilization." Vidocq is determined to get to the root of de Preval's connection to Le Blanc, a connection that once involved her being persuaded to come back to Paris with the Bourbons. Apparently, Leblanc had an object that he'd asked her to identify, a teething ring and an emblem that has been engraved in miniature, a double eagle, the heraldic emblem of the legendary Empress Maria Theresa, Marie Antoinette's mother.

Another murder occurs in the area of Saint-Cloud which leads to the discovery of a delicate young man by the name of Charles Rapskeller, but from the outset there's something strangely enigmatic about this soft and sun-ripened young man. Dodging the grasping hands of various stakeholders, those shadowy and furtive figures who lurk in the alleyways at night, Vidocq and Hector become determined to protect Charles from those who seek to dispose of him and from those who believe that he is indeed the "lost King." Caught up in a complex chase with a constant sense of impending menace, it is Hector and Charles who form the unlikely bond, with Hector watching over his new friend with something like new-found love. With two men dead, a killer at liberty, and the assassins of flesh and blood queuing up for instructions at confessional booths, the so-called king is eventually thrust into deadly path of Jacobean revenge while the poor Hector finds himself reluctantly fighting for his survival and for the life of his young charge.

With pages that are filled with blood and danger, action and intrigue, the fates of Hector and Charles - and indeed Hector's royalist father - are tightly entwined. From the Madeleine to the Bastille, the million coffee houses, and patisseries, theatres and onto the billiard rooms, the air in this novel seethes and crackles with an authenticity, the action barely stopping for a breath, and the ugly spectacle of the black square tower, erected all those centuries ago by the Knights Templar, constantly standing over the a murky and sinister and fog-bound Paris. With the blood of another man's life, yet again passing through him, Hector realizes too late the extent of his father's sympathies for the Dauphine. In the end, the only hope for the poor Charles' salvation is the formidable Monsieur Vidocq, with his criminal mentality and his ability to master any disguise, he arrives just in time when both men most need his help, with the danger of the guillotine staring them down and the only hope a last minute reprieve. Although obviously more fiction and fact, one is left exhausted at the end of this rewarding novel, while also left to ponder Bayard's fascinating scenario and the truth of what really happened in the dark tower, and a Louis XVII who was perhaps rescued from a certain death and spirited away, just as the old story says. Mike Leonard 2008.

I've loved all the other books I've read by Bayard: 'Mr Timothy' and 'A Pale Blue Eye.' This novel is no exception - Bayard has a writing style all of his own. There really is no one like him. He also creates a range of marvellous characters: villains, heroes and some wonderful eccentrics who are still totally credible. Yet Bayard also respects history: we are given terrifying glimpses of the terrors of the Revolution and how France is just beginning to deal with its atrocities. Most skillful of all, however, is his use of real historical figures - Vidoq and the 'Lost Dauphin' and his sister - while still producing a richly satisfying and believable ending which does not contradict known events. A triumph!

I bought the book as a Christmas present for my sister she had asked for this book before and she was very pleased to open the package. Great book and despatched very quickly and in great condition.