Game of Patience
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- $5.99
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- $5.99
Publisher Description
Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police agent and investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims are Célie Montereau, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family, and the man who was blackmailing her. Rosalie Clément, an enigmatic, bitter young woman, provides information that steers Ravel toward a young man with a violent past who was in love with Célie, but further inquiry reveals that—according to an eyewitness—he cannot have been her murderer. And recent, notorious miscarriages of justice lead Ravel, beset with fears of sending an innocent person to the guillotine, to doubt his instincts. From the gritty back alleys of Paris to its glittering salons and cafés, through the heart of the feverish, decadent society of postrevolutionary France, his investigation leads him into a puzzle involving hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
After A Far Better Rest (2000), an homage to Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Alleyn returns to postrevolutionary Paris in her second novel, a taut police procedural. In the fall of 1796, police spy Aristide Ravel, who's haunted by fears that he has helped send dozens of innocent victims to the guillotine, and his employer, Commissaire Brasseur, investigate the slaying of Jean-Louis Saint-Ange, a property owner who lived on his rents, and Saint-Ange's ex-lover, C lie Montereau. Saint-Ange had apparently been extorting money from aristocratic families, and few, including his colorful porter, Grangier, mourn his demise. Despite qualms about "mistakenly being the cause of a man's death," Aristide dutifully interviews anxious former associates of C lie and her well-to-do parents in search of the truth. Full of authentic historical detail, ranging from the rise of General Bonaparte to the antics of flamboyant incroyables (cross-dressers), the story builds to an emotionally charged climax in which Aristide reveals painful secrets from his own past.
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