Shortlisted for the CWA International Dagger 2011.
This fifth exciting adventure for Nicolas Le Floch has it all: serial
crimes and a bizarre murder weapon, as well as debauchery, espionage,
and the follies of a young court where ancient rivalries and grudges
still linger.
Judges’ comments: ‘Nicola Le Floch, a Paris police commissioner under the young Louis XVI, investigates a murder which appears to implicate one of the king’s ministers, revealing local vice and foreign spies. Parot’s superb invocations of life in eighteenth-century Paris never overwhelm a complex intrigue involving all levels of French society.’
Le Noir, Sartine's successor as Lieutenant General of Police, distrusts Le Floch. Monsieur de Saint-Florentin, the King's new minister, entrusts Commissioner Le Floch with the investigation into the murder of a chambermaid whose throat was cut in unusual circumstances at Saint-Florentin's home. His inquiry takes place both in Paris and Versailles, where he secures his position alongside the King and must confront the mysteries of the Trianon and the horrors of Bicetre.
Jean-François Parot is a diplomat and historian. The Châtelet Apprentice was his first novel , and the first in a series of Nicholas Le Floch mysteries which have been published to much acclaim in France. The second in the series, The Man with the Lead Stomach, was published in April 2008. The third Nicholas Le Floch title The Phantom of the Rue Royale will be available from October 2009.
