This series is getting progressively weirder. I only picked the books up again - in the wrong place, with one I had already read - because I caught an episode of the French TV adaptation, but now I think I must have forgotten what a chore they are to read and how much of a priggish bore Le Floch is. Or maybe, to give him and the author the benefit of the doubt, that's down to the translation.

Like Agatha Christie by way of Raymond Chandler set in eighteenth century Paris, and with a dash of The Exorcist - literally - thrown in, I could not make any sense of this mystery. A young woman is found strangled after the real events of May 1770, when a firework display to celebrate the marriage of the future Louis XVI to Marie Antoinette resulted in a blaze which lead to over 100 people being killed in the panic to escape. Nicolas is on hand to investigate her death, and gets caught up in a complicated family drama, involving two secret pregnancies, a Native American and, yes, an actual exorcism that is never really explained!

Paris is of course the star of the story, and the reason why I keep reading, especially with the French Revolution drawing ever nearer! Parot's attention to historical detail is incredible and fascinating. I just wish his detective was more likeable and his mysteries easier to follow. ( )

The Dauphin's wedding to an Austrian princess was celebrated in Paris with a firework display. But as the fireworks failed to explode, panic in the crowd has led to crush and hundreds hurt or killed. Sifting through the bodies Commissioner Le Floch comes across one which does not appear to have died by accident. This leads him to a complex tale of revenge and murder involving a Micmac indian, a family of furriers and a possessed maid.

The third outing for Nicholas Le Floch takes place several years after the last. Madame de Pompadour (the lady of Choisy) is dead and the King has a new mistress. However Nicholas and his trusted group of allies are still fighting crime in the centre of Paris. Parot has really found his stride in his tales of the french detective. The plot is complicated and yet fairly simple and there are lots of sideways diversions to keep the reader entertained. ( )