Catherine Delors

For the King is a flawed but readable novel, set in Napoleonic Paris and based on real events. On Christmas Eve 1800, royalists detonated an 'infernal machine' on the Rue Saint-Nicaise, hoping to assassinate Napoleon and instead killing dozens of innocent people. The fictional Chief Inspector Roch Miquel is put in charge of finding the conspirators and thus saving his own father's life. The best parts of the novel were Delors' evocation of post-Revolutionary Paris, and I wished she had focused more on those rather than on burdening the book with too many points of view and an ending which felt tacked on and by-the-numbers. Pared down a little, focusing solely on Roch's voice and on a Paris populated by the poor and by the striving middle-classes, where rabbit-skin men walked the streets and sodomy had been decriminialised (a fact I was unaware of!), and I think this could have been a much stronger work.… (more)

Another intelligent and well-researched novel based on historical events from Catherine Delors.

On Christmas Eve 1800, three royalist agents plotted to assassinate Napoleon Bonaparte, then First Consul and soon to be Emperor of France, by blowing up an 'infernal machine' in a busy Paris street. Bonaparte, supposedly warned by a prophetic dream, escaped harm, but blamed the explosion and the resulting massacre of innocent citizens on extremist Jacobins, and had 130 'suspects' rounded up and imprisoned. Catherine Delors seamlessly blends fact with fiction by placing her own detective, Chief Inspector Roch Miquel, in the centre of the investigation to find the bombers and clear the name of his own father into the bargain.

More political intrigue than traditional detective novel, the real strength of For the King is how flawlessly Delors translates documented history into a dark thriller, and the atmospheric detail with which she brings post-Revolutionary Paris to life. Roch is very similar to Susanne Alleyn's Inspector Ravel, or Parot's Nicolas Le Floch, and his proud, priggish persona adds little sympathetic charm to the mix. Basically, he is a fictional point of focus in a cast of historical figures, but his dalliance with a married woman not only takes Roch down a peg, but also creates a surprise twist to the established course of events. His lover Blanche Coudert, based on the beautiful and enigmatic Juliette Recamier, is a strong, individual heroine, yet long-suffering Alexandrine, Roch's childhood sweetheart, is far more believable.

Overall, despite the obvious lack of mystery and an abrupt, convenient ending, I was able to lose myself in the story, and enjoyed being transported back to Paris in the winter of 1801. Delors occasionally goes overboard in translating French place names and terms - I think it's fairly obvious that Rue Paradis means Paradise Street - and the modern dialogue is perhaps the weakest part of the novel, but she has a remarkable talent for cleverly adapting complex political situations into intriguing novels.… (more)