Susanne Alleyn

Rating: 4.5* of five

The Publisher Says: Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police agent and investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims prove to be Célie Montereau, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family, and the man who was blackmailing her.

Célie's enigmatic and bitter friend Rosalie Clément provides Aristide with intelligence that steers him toward Philippe Aubry, a young man with a violent past who had been in love show more with Célie. According to an eyewitness, however, Aubry could not have murdered Célie. As time passes, Aristide finds himself falling in love with Rosalie, albeit reluctantly, as he suspects that she knows more about the murders than she will say.

When Aristide uncovers evidence that points to Rosalie herself, he must learn whom she is protecting and why before he can obtain justice for Célie and save Rosalie from the guillotine. From the gritty back alleys of Paris to its glittering salons and cafés, through the heart of the feverish, decadent society of post-revolutionary France, Aristide's investigation leads him into a puzzle involving hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds.

With elaborate French cultural atmosphere, author Susanne Alleyn has created a sophisticated and stylish mystery set in the uneasy and turbulent years between the Terror and the rise of Napoleon.

My Review: French Revolution buff Alleyn's second novel and first mystery is a perfect example of how historical fiction can illuminate history in the most satisfying and intriguing light; simple textbook history doesn't and can't come close to the concerns and needs of the actual people of 1796 Paris, and this book does that job very, very well.

I could end this review here, adding only "read it yourself if you don't believe me," but I want to offer some specifics.

The upheaval of the Revolution was as inevitable as anything in all of history could be. When intolerable abuse is heaped upon enough people for a long enough time, they find a way to make it stop. While there were Royalists in France, like there were Tories in the American Revolution, they lost...so the history is that of the winners.

But what about the average citizen and citizeness? (These were the titles that replaced Monsieur et Madame in those years.) What did life hold for them? Alleyn explores this subject in her novel, and what life held was...well, what it always holds: Love, hate, fear, passion, joy, rejection, redemption (though that last is rare). So Alleyn delves into our human comedy to show us that, mutatis mutandis, Revolutionary Paris's people were just like us, only colder and hungrier.

The story of Aristide Ravel, police spy, and Henri Sanson, executioner, is one of destinies that criss-cross in unpleasant places. Surprisingly, they find themselves friends...okay, friendly acquaintances at first. As a result of the movements of the plot, their most dramatic meeting will cause the friendship to blossom or die; another book will tell that tale. But theirs is the central relationship in this book. It's an odd thing to say, I suppose, but it's true; they each have one half of a very important story in their possession, neither knowing this until the author clangs them into each other so hard that the reader's teeth rattle.

While Sanson is central to the story, he's offstage most of the time. This device worked well enough, though I was a bit overprepared for his eventual appearances by the time they happened.

The principal quality of this book for me was its rhythm. I felt I was there, living by the truly alien Revolutionary calendar of thirty-day months and ten-day weeks. I found myself thinking "isn't it just about décadi, shouldn't stuff be closed?" (That was the Revolutionary Sunday-day-of-rest equivalent.) I wondered where the manservant was more than once while immersed in Aristide's life...he's too poor to have one. (I relate.) I felt myself jolting along in the fiacre with Aristide and his boss (actually just the frost-heaved Long Island roads) to the Hotel de Ville (my village's city hall is nothing like so grand, but it's next to the liberry so the association stuck).

If you are bored by history, try reading this book. It will allow you to experience history more directly than even a conventional historical novel could, since there are such ordinary human stakes in the crime committed and its solution. If you're a mystery fan, the puzzle should keep you going. IIf you're just an old sourpuss, give it a miss. But I hope you aren't, and hope you'll have a great time walking around Paris with Aristide and his crew.


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I love this stuff.

I didn't so much want to read this as a writer as as (as as?) a reader. I used to write, though not historical fiction (HF) – but I am a long-time (sometimes I feel it should be "long-suffering") reader of all-sorts, including lots of historical fiction and mystery. And as I know I have said in several HF/HM (historical mystery) reviews, one thing that is sure to make me fling a book against the nearest wall (unless I'm reading on my Kindle) is for anyone in any story show more set before about 1875, or an equivalent time period, to say "okay". It's not okay.

Susanne Alleyn is a lady after my own heart. She knows the pain of an anachronistic "okay", or an out of place revolver, or an impossible cup of tea – and instead of just complaining about it like me she aims to do something about it.

And so, in an intelligent and fun-to-read format, she proceeds through the various areas where authors, and not just new authors, tend to screw up. Don't – as Adam Schell so wonderfully explained in Tomato Rhapsody – include tomatoes in Italian (or any European) cuisine before the 1500's; don't have a chipmunk run over someone's foot in 16th century England or have an Apache brave leap onto his horse in 15th century North America; don't – DON'T – have anyone say "okay" before 1890, no matter what.

I've been looking over some of my book reviews lately, and I'd love to anonymously send at least a few of those authors copies of this book. Because just about everything she tries to instruct against has come up at some point. (Except tobacco… I don't think I've seen misuse of tobacco in a book. I think I would have flagged it.) Like the Restoration Era CPR in one book, along with the use of "hammered" to mean drunk; the references to personal space in another; an accusation that one person is "playing" another in 15th century Scotland, along with a reference to "play[ing] that card". All the bits that seem to be written with a tin ear toward historical accuracy … I've never understood why someone with that sort of tone deafness chooses to set his tale in another place and time. I've never understood why someone who chooses to set his tale in another place and time can't do the research. Here, in one easy dose, is an antidote to a whole heck of a lot of that nonsense – and it's also a gateway drug, to abuse that metaphor further: with this as a starting point, it can't but be a great deal easier to know whether that one character should be eating spaghetti … or if that other one should be wearing underpants… show less

Rating: 4* of five

The Publisher Says: A Tale of Two Cities is the story of Charles Darnay and Lucie Manette, but Sydney Carton is the hero who makes the ultimate sacrifice for love. Sydney disappears from the novel in London and turns up years later in Paris to bring the story to its heartbreaking end. A Far Better Rest imagines his missing personal history and makes him the center of this tragic tale. Born in England of an unloving father and a French mother, Sydney is sent to college in show more Paris, where he meets Charles Darnay and the other students who will have enormous influence on his life and alter the course of French history -- Robespierre and Camille Desmoulins among them. The beauty and kindness of Charles's wife, Lucie Manette, affects Sydney so deeply that he secretly devotes his life to her happiness.

Sydney becomes a major participant in the formation of the French Republic at the end of the eighteenth century and a witness to one of the most gruesome periods in history, as the significant people in his life fall to the guillotine. A Far Better Rest is a novel of passion, identity, and history that stands fully on its own.

My Review: The Doubleday UK meme, a book a day for July 2014, is the goad I'm using to get through my snit-based unwritten reviews. Today's prompt, in honor of Bastille Day, is to select your favorite novel set in or about France.

Okay. I know this will come as a surprise to y'all, being as how I've kept it such a closely guarded secret, but I have to say this right up front: I don't much care for the novels of Mr. Charles Dickens.

I know, I know, pick your jaws up from the floor, I'm sure you'll recover from the shock soon.

Now, with that bombshell out of the way, consider this: I am rating a book based on Mr. Dickens' dreary, interminable, turgid, jelly-bodied clunking clanking gawdawful sentimental absurdly overblown....

*ahem*

I am rating this novel, even factoring in its source, at four stars. And wanna know a secret? I've read all Alley's Aristide Ravel mysteries, set in Revolutionary Paris. And her novel The Executioner's Heir. And her short fiction, Masquerade. And her non-fiction Medieval UNderpants (I mean, how could one not read something titled Medieval Underpants?).

So absorb for a moment the improbability of a man with the discernment and good taste to loathe Dickens picking up this novel in the first place; reading a snatch of it and getting hooked; buying the Soho Press hardcover at retail; and becoming such a fan that he's read what there is to read by the author.

So I'd say that makes this my favorite novel set in and or about France. Why? Because I've read a lot of books, and unlike most historical fiction, this book reads like it was written by a person from that time who simply, inexplicably, happens to be alive now. The same is true of her Ravel mysteries. I don't know how she does it, exactly, but Alleyn handwaves away the 225 years between the Revolution and today. Forget you're reading a hardcover that did not cost you a month's wages. Or a Kindle whose mere existence would be a marvel to the people you're reading about. And you know what? You *will* forget those things.

I love immersive reads. I love to lose myself in a time and a place not here and not now. And Susanne Alleyn has done that for me again, and again, and never failed to make me happy I've spent time in her company.

Best of all? The Kindle edition of this book is a whopping $2.99. Please go buy it. This author deserves our support!


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Aristide Ravel is an agent of the police in post-Revolutionary Paris. Assisting the police without actually joining the force means that he can investigate puzzling murders but avoid the tedious public service that also goes with the job. So he dresses in black, 'like a crow that's fallen into an inkwell', and plays patience (or 'solitaire', which would be more appropriate) until his friend and associate Commissaire Brasseur calls on his sleuthing skills. I like him already! (I'm only show more kicking myself that this book has been in my Shopping Basket for months, nay years, but I have only recently purchased it because I found a Kindle version - with cramped text - that prompted my curiosity!)

Although not a particularly original detective character - Ravel's only distinguishing traits are his card-playing, perhaps representing his ordered and patient mind, and his haunting backstory - Susanne Alleyn has chosen an interesting historical era for her books and done her research well. The French Revolution is my pet subject, but I have never really read beyond the Terror, so following Ravel through the blood-stained and unsettled streets of Paris in 1796 (post-Robespierre, pre-Napoleon) is new to me, yet at the same time grounded in familiar places and events. Although the guillotine is a symbol of the Terror, dispatching royalty and revolutionaries alike, the 'national razor' remained as a method of execution until 1939, so the threat of capital punishment still looms large for Ravel's suspects, even though the Revolution is over. I also love the detail that Alleyn slips seamlessly into the text, bringing time and place alive - historical figures, real crimes, and even a bibliography make for an exciting murder mystery that is all the more interesting for being based on facts. Alleyn knows her stuff, from police procedure to the street names of late eighteenth century Paris.

Despite being a little top-heavy in backstory and exposition, the plot of this first novel is neatly crafted and Ravel is a flawed genius, whose flashes of insight usually occur just in time to rectify his own mistakes. The reader is also quicker to realise what is happening than the detective, as with Celie's secret and Rosalie's influence, but Ravel gets there in the end. The ending was a little too tidy for my liking, and I could only forgive the cross-dressing and 'tortured soul' angle because Alleyn was inspired by a real-life murder investigation (can't argue with history!), but the rest I loved. Definitely recommended, to readers of crime fiction and historical novels, history buffs interested in the French Revolution (Ravel actually reminded me of Chauvelin from Orczy's Scarlet Pimpernel series), or just anyone who loves a well-written story. show less