Most helpful customer reviews
|
|
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A clever historical detective fiction novel full of emotion, suspense and history, Jul 28 2008
Hector Carpentier, a Parisian medical student recounts his strange unexpected encounter with Vidocq, a former convict turned head of a mysterious police force and unusual informants known for its unusual luck in capturing some of Paris's most elusive criminals. When a murdered man shows up blocks from Hector's home with the name Dr. Carpentier on a slip of paper, Vidocq intends to do everything within his power to ferret out the truth. As the trial of clues unfold, the past comes back to haunt Hector and indeed Paris itself. Working together yet perhaps also trying to hide the truth, Hector's examination of medical records unveils a mystery ---- what if the young dauphin Louis-Charles, son of Marie-Antoinette and King Louis XVI had not died and somehow survived or even escaped from his imprisonment in the notorious Black Tower? In the meantime, a mysterious man with no memory has surfaced, a man with mysterious links to Hector and the past. Could he be the dauphin? Who might want this man dead badly enough to commit murder?
Louis Bayard's THE BLACK TOWER gives the reader a fascinating look into the Bourbon Restoration as well as the French Revolution's violence and excess that haunt his characters. The journals of the assistant to the doctor attending the dauphin surface, detailing the brutal results of abuse forced on a child in the anti-monarchy fervor of the Revolution. Louis Bayard gives reader a fascinating glimpse into characters and indeed a culture that seeks to erase the past and the origins in the name of justice. History and its effects are seen in the lives of his characters, a city and a country that struggles with its past origins. The changes in the lives of his characters as the past glory fades to a shadow of the past, a more sparse detached life creates a beautiful insight into the way history might have been experienced by people living it. THE BLACK TOWER brings forward the figure of the dauphin, not just as a tie to the monarchy, but as a little boy and a hope in the hearts of those who have lived through the Revolution.
With this beautifully crafted portrait of the times, Louis Bayard adds a riveting tale of suspense and mystery. Picking up in the character some credit as the inspiration for Edgar Allen Poe's Dupin, Louis Bayard takes the reader on a journey to discover the historical and literary origins of detective work itself in the enigmatic Vidocq, a man who would later found the first known private detective agency in 1833. Vidocq is a man with amazing cunning, a man who can twist a confession out of anyone and strike fear into the most hardened criminals. As Hector and Vidocq make a thrilling hunt for the truth, the confrontation of their personalities, the emerging suspects, and plots of conspiracy merge to create a mystery that keeps readers guessing to shocking conclusion. Louis Bayard's THE BLACK TOWER is a delightful mix of literary and detective historical fiction blended with an exquisite fictional imagination, creating a historical "what if" suspense tale that thrills while it also moves the heart. THE BLACK TOWER is a must read book for all lovers of historical fiction and suspense! THE BLACK TOWER is the kind of book that that demonstrates the best of literary fiction, a book that continues to elicit even more after the last page is read in the hearts and imagination of avid historical readers.
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"Do you see the fate that awaits you?", Oct 5 2008
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.
|
|
|
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
The boy in the Black Tower, Sep 18 2008
"All it takes some nights is a shift in the wind's direction, a creak on the stair, and the name flies like an oath from their throats..."
Eugène François Vidocq is not as well known as Sherlock Holmes or Hercule Poirot, but this French ex-convict had the honor of being one of the first private eyes, as well as creating the concept of plainclothes cops.
He's also the brilliant mind which Louis Bayard's latest novel revolves around, on a dangerous hunt for the presumed-dead dauphin. But instead of a stuffy historical slog, "The Black Tower" is an exquisitely detailed thriller, set in a dark period in France's history. And at heart, it's also the story of a timid young man's quest to finish his late father's work.
Hector Carpentier is understandably shocked when the legendary Vidocq deceives his way into Hector's house, and drags him to see a murdered man, Leblanc.
And because Leclanc had Hector's name on his person, Vidocq insists that Hector accompany him as he tries to find out who killed him and why. And they soon discover that Leblanc was somehow involved with the young dauphin Louis-Charles, who supposedly died after years of torment and misery in the Black Tower. That was twenty years ago, but rumors of the dauphin's survival still linger.
Then after another man is murdered, they stumble across a strange, childlike young man named Charles, who Hector suspects may be the lost dauphin. His involvement grows even deeper when he learns of his father's long-ago connection to Louis-Charles, and the diary that may prove or disprove Charles' identity. But Leblanc's murderer is still out there -- and the two young men may be his next targets.
The horribly abused, orphaned dauphin is still a mystery to history buffs -- nobody really knows if he died in the Tower, or somehow escaped. Even now with genetic testing, there's no definite proof one way or another. That's a pretty fascinating premise for a murder myster/political thriller right there -- and Louis Bayard plumbs it to the depths for all the suspense he can muster.
In fact, Bayard's talent for historical mysteries has never been more impressive than it is here. He winds together political, social and personal issues into a tight little plot, peppered with the increasingly desperate diary entries of Hector Senior ("I have never cared for bullies, regardless of what office they hold"). And the feeling of dread he slowly spins over the story is absolutely harrowing, right to a truly shocking climax.
And his handling of this book shows that he's the perfect writer for this sort of novel. Rather than scrabbling to show off his wealth of research, he settles for the atmosphere of Paris during the Restoration -- tense, scarred and full of painful memories. He brings the mud and sewers of Paris to life, seconds before switching to a lovely little flower garden or a cute little side shop.
Though the hesitant, timidly courageous Hector is the narrator of this adventure, Vidocq is the star. He's lusty, brawny, larger-than-life and full of vital energy like some kind of lost earth god. Yet he's also given some very human quirks, such as his love of costumes, or the nicknames he frequently bestows on poor Hector ("Please, Doctor-eating-off-your-convict-made-china, tell me why I need papers"). As for Charles, he's a simply adorable child-man.
"The Black Tower" takes a real-life mystery from centuries ago, and spins it into a magnificent, suspenseful historical thriller, with a powerful detective and a strange goal.
|
|
|
Most recent customer reviews
|
by Louis Bayard
by Louis Bayard
by Michael Cox
by Michael Cox
by Kate Summerscale
![[{Addicted To Books]}](http://img.amazon.ca/images/I/41caSSxQXzL._AA60_.jpg)
