Name: City of Light, City of Poison
ISBN: 9780393239782

Holly Tucker

Appointed to conquer the crime capital of the world, the first Paris police chief faces an epidemic of murder."

Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris

City of Light, City of Poison

Laura

This has been the year of mediocre nonfiction. None of the books I read were real standouts, despite the fact I did like most of them. But this book. This is the book I wished The Poisoner's Handbook was. I mean, I was happy enough with The Poisoner's Handbook as is, but I loved this one. It reminded me of the way Erik Larsen (of The Devil in the White City fame) writes.

I admit, though, when I first started the parts about Louis XIV's mistresses, I was a bit skeptical. For one thing, this book was not advertised as being about that, and didn't know how well Holly Tucker was going to connect it with the main story. While the connection was, in fact, tenuous, I was still fascinated by the dramatic stories about Louis XIV's mistresses. I felt like I was watching some trashy reality TV show, but a 100 times better because it's about one of the most powerful rulers in French history. I get that some people might be bored by these parts, but I personally really loved them.

And besides, the actual poison stuff was extremely easy to read, as well as the bits about the reform of Paris and the Parisian prison system. It was especially interesting to read about how coroners, often just surgeons or doctors back then, no special training was required to become one, were able to tell how people died just by basic scientific intuition. There were no fancy tests done to tell whether someone died of arsenic or snake venom, instead, they had to compare the effects of that specific poison to an already deceased confirmed poisoned body and tell by that. I always liked reading how people make d0 with what they have, especially in the days before technology.

And I ended up really liking Nicolas de la Reynie as a main character. He was the kind of guy you'd want to root for in detective novels, someone whose relentless pursual of the truth is admirable. He was truly one of a kind for his time period, especially since he didn't let class stand in the way of justice. While it is true that many of the noblewomen involved in the poison cases he studied did have more cushy prison lives than the women in the Third Estate who were arrested for the same crimes, and some of them got off on lighter sentences, he didn't wave their cases under the rug, and it's entirely likely he was frustrated by the inability of the Arsenal judges to see that a noblewoman of high birth could have committed such heinous crimes. And the cushy prison existence these women led was a matter of necessity, he knew that if he treated them cruelly then he would get nowhere and even perhaps be forced out of his job. De la Reynie really was one of the first in believing that justice is blind.

Continue reading this review on my blog here: https://bookwormbasics.blogspot.com/2...

Elizabeth Neill

"An artful reconstruction of seventeenth-century Paris with riveting storytelling."-- The New Yorker

City of Light, City of Poison Murder, Magic, and the First Police Chief of Paris

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