The Cavalier of the Apocalypse

by Susanne Alleyn

Overview

In the icy winter of 1786, in the final years before the French Revolution, hunger, cold, and seething frustration with the iron grip of France's absolute monarchy drive poor and rich alike to outright defiance. Slums, fashionable cafés, and even aristocratic mansions echo with discontent and the first warning signals of the approaching turmoil of 1789.

Paris's cemeteries are foul and disease-ridden, but no one, including penniless writer Aristide Ravel, expects to find a man with his throat cut lying dead in a churchyard, surrounded by strange Masonic symbols. Already suspected of subversive activities, Ravel must now clear his name of murder. His search for answers amid the city's literary and intellectual demimonde-with the aid of friends who may not be all that they seem-leads him into a tangle of conspiracy, secret societies, royal scandal, and imminent revolution, which grows only more complex when the corpse disappears...

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781502592378
Publisher:	CreateSpace Publishing
Publication date:	10/02/2014
Series:	Aristide Ravel Mysteries , #1
Pages:	248
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.52(d)

About the Author

Susanne Alleyn has loved history all her life, aided and abetted by her grandmother, Lillie V. Albrecht, an author of historical children's books in the 1950s and 60s. Susanne is the author of the Aristide Ravel historical mystery series, set in revolutionary Paris; A FAR BETTER REST, the reimagining of Dickens's A TALE OF TWO CITIES; the nonfiction MEDIEVAL UNDERPANTS AND OTHER BLUNDERS: A WRITER'S (AND EDITOR'S) GUIDE TO KEEPING HISTORICAL FICTION FREE OF COMMON ANACHRONISMS, ERRORS, AND MYTHS; and A TALE OF TWO CITIES: A READER'S COMPANION, an annotated guide to the classic novel. Happy to describe herself as an "insufferable knowitall" about historical trivia (although she lost on Jeopardy!), Susanne has been writing about and researching eighteenth-century and revolutionary France for nearly three decades. She is currently working on the sequel to THE EXECUTIONER'S HEIR and various nonfiction projects.

Editorial Reviews

A murder in 1786 Paris turns a hack writer into a first-rate detective. Aristide Ravel is struggling to make his bread from his writings, most of which criticize the activities of the corrupt church and weak King whose policies will lead to the horrors of the Revolution. In a cemetery, Ravel stumbles upon a murder that he connects to the Masons by the symbols cut into the body. In better times Ravel lived in the same building as police inspector Brasseur, who sees him now as both a suspect and a resource to solve the crime. When Brasseur presses Ravel into working for the police, the clever writer proves his worth by his observations and his connections to the bourgeoisie. Even though the murdered man's body is stolen from the morgue, his distinctive waistcoat identifies him as one of two missing men: either the Marquis de Beaupreau or Monsieur Lambert Saint-Landry. Lambert's beautiful wife Eugenie and his sister Sophie cannot imagine who would murder such an earnest man-although like the Marquis, he is a Mason. Ravel and Brasseur pursue the Masonic connection with help from Ravel's wealthy friend Derville, whose revelation that Ravel's father was a convicted murderer imperils Ravel's romance with lively Sophie. Even so, Ravel's bitterness does not stop him from pursuing the murderer from the lowest hovels to the palaces of the aristocracy. An intriguing prequel to Ravel's revolutionary adventures (A Treasury of Regret, 2007, etc.) with a nice twist in the denouement.

Kirkus Reviews