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    The Devil in Montmartre: A Mystery in Fin de Siècle Paris
    The Devil in Montmartre: A Mystery in Fin de Siècle Paris
    The Devil in Montmartre: A Mystery in Fin de Siècle Paris
    Ebook308 pages6 hours

    The Devil in Montmartre: A Mystery in Fin de Siècle Paris

    By Gary Inbinder

    2.5/5

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    About this ebook

    When the mutilated corpse of a beautiful dancer is found in a Montmartre sewer, a nervous public fears that Jack the Ripper has crossed the Channel—but Inspector Achille Lefebvre has his own theories.

    Amid the hustle and bustle of the Paris 1889 Universal Exposition, workers discover the mutilated corpse of a popular model and Moulin Rouge Can-Can dancer in a Montmartre sewer. Hysterical rumors swirl that Jack the Ripper has crossed the Channel, and Inspector Achille Lefebvre enters the Parisian underworld to track down the brutal killer. His suspects are the artist Toulouse-Lautrec; Jojo, an acrobat at the Circus Fernando, and Sir Henry Collingwood, a mysterious English gynecologist and amateur artist.

    Pioneering the as-yet-untried system of fingerprint detection and using cutting edge forensics, including crime scene photography, anthropometry, pathology, and laboratory analysis, Achille attempts to separate the innocent from the guilty. But he must work quickly before the “Paris Ripper” strikes again.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPegasus Crime
    Release dateDec 15, 2014
    ISBN9781605987316
    Author

    Gary Inbinder

    Gary Inbinder is the author of The Devil in Montmartre and The Hanged Man, and his fiction, articles, and essays have appeared in Bewildering Stories, Halfway Down the Stairs, The Absent Willow Review, Morpheus Tales, Litsnack, Touchstone Magazine, and other publications. A member of both the Historical Novel Society and the Bewildering Stories Editorial Review Board, he lives in Woodland Hills, California.

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    2.5/5

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    • 4/5
      3.8, rounded up.Despite the title of this book, there is definitely nothing supernatural going on here. But I knew that already when I decided to read it (and my thanks to both the author and to Pegasus for my copy!!) -- and it turned out to be a good novel of historical crime fiction that should appeal to anyone who enjoys this genre. Personally, I used to read this genre all of the time, outgrew it, and moved on. But this book sounded like it might be good and it was. The year is 1889, and it's only two weeks before the closing ceremonies of that year's Expedition Universelle. A year earlier, London had been in the grip of fear because of the horrific acts perpetrated by Jack the Ripper, so when a female torso is discovered in a city sewer, the police want to catch the murderer as quickly as possible to stifle any rumors that the Ripper has crossed the channel and set up shop in Paris. The chief inspector of the Sûreté, Paul Feraud, knows that he needs his best man for the job -- and that just happens to be Inspector Achille Lefebvre. Only thirty, Lefebvre is "a new breed of detective," one who believes in applying modern investigative techniques in his work. But he gets lucky: the autopsy report reveals a clue that points Lefebvre in a particular direction even though someone is doing his level best to put the frame on someone else, and the report of a missing woman gives him a potential lead on who the victim might be. But while he's working hard to make sure he gets everything right, his rival in the police department has his own ideas about how to bring a quick end to the case, one that could definitely incite mob violence in a city where the divisions caused by the Dreyfus affair are still fresh and are still on everyone's mind. The Devil in Montmartre is set in the Paris of Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, where the whirling skirts of can-can dancers mesmerize the customers of the Moulin Rouge, where the small boîtes serve as meeting places for professionals and street people alike, a place where art and artists flourish. The author easily captures this atmosphere and the beautiful parks with their gardens visited by tourists from America and England; in contrast to the beauty and excitement of the city, he also takes his readers into dirty back streets and alleys and out into areas controlled by the city's criminals, places that most visitors never see. It's also very obvious that the author put in a LOT of time on research, especially in the area of police work and contemporary investigative methods. Putting that together with his character construction, it's impossible to believe that this is his first mystery novel. Trust me -- I've read enough first novels to feel qualified to judge. On the other hand, and this is probably more on my end rather than his since it isn't all that obvious, I figured out the who quite early into the story. I wasn't overly keen on the romantic parts either, but that's a personal thing and an area where I tend to find myself in the minority. However, I will say that the book made for fun reading. So have a good time with it. Hopefully there will be a sequel some day, but in the meantime, The Devil in Montmartre should especially appeal to fans of historical crime fiction or historical fiction in general. It's lighter than my normal crime preferences, but there is definitely a good central mystery to be solved, and even though a headless torso may make some people maybe want to think twice about picking up the book, the violence is not anywhere near graphic nor is it overused or used gratuitously in any way. That in itself is commendable these days. I think Mr. Inbinder has done a fine job here with his first mystery novel. I hope it's only the first of many

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    The Devil in Montmartre - Gary Inbinder

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