Her Last Portrait

Harriet Constable, author of the international bestseller The Instrumentalist, returns with a gripping and propulsive historical novel inspired by the life of seventeenth-century rebel Julie d’Aubigny, or, as her fans would have known her, “La Maupin,” the star of the original Paris Opera

Paris, 1705: Marie, a shy and beautiful widow, is the lucky artist chosen to paint the newest portrait of the reclusive La Maupin. Like every other patron of the Paris Opera, Marie is starry-eyed over the singer, but she’s desperate to know the truth of the woman with the most beautiful voice in the world—the girl once known as Julie. As the portrait takes shape, painter and subject’s tightly wound performances give way to desire. Yet both women are aware of the shadow of feet under the door, the person always lurking on the other side . . .

Paris, 1687: Nicolas de la Reynie has been assigned one last task before he can retire as the first ever police chief of the City of Light: he must retrieve the silly, runaway wife of one of the Sun King’s courtiers, a girl called Julie. Her residence seems in order, Julie’s wardrobe still full of clothes, nothing missing that suggests she has run . . . except there’s a letter addressed to de la Reynie, goading him to find her. But as wives begin poisoning their husbands en masse, and the threat of an uprising bubbles ever hotter, one wife’s escape quickly becomes an epic cat-and-mouse chase through the streets of Paris. Julie outruns de la Reynie just long enough to rise through the ranks of a travelling opera company.

Weaving between thrilling escapes and tender moments, Harriet Constable brings a legend and all her rumours back to life in dazzling, atmospheric strokes. Her Last Portrait is an ode to performance and disguise, an era of husbands versus wives. It can end only one way: with a night at the opera.