The Hanged Man: A Mystery in Fin de Siecle Paris

by Gary Inbinder

Overview

Like many fin de siècle Parisians, Inspector Achille Lefebvre is looking forward to a pleasant summer holiday at a seaside resort with his wife, Adele—but a body found hanging from a bridge in a public park interferes with the inspector's plans.

Paris: July, 1890. Inspector Achille Lefebvre and his wife Adele are enjoying their stay at a seaside resort—until a body found hanging from a bridge in a public park demands the Inspector's attention.

Is it suicide or murder? A twisted trail of evidence draws Inspector Lefebvre into a shadowy underworld of international intrigue, espionage, and terrorism. Time is of the essence; pressure mounts on the Sûreté to get results. Achille's chief orders him to work with his former partner, Inspector Rousseau, now in charge of a special unit in the newly formed political brigade. But can Achille trust the detective who let him down in another case?

Inspector Lefebvre uses innovative forensics and a network of police spies to uncover a secret alliance, a scheme involving the sale of a cutting-edge high explosive, and an assassination plot that threatens to ignite a world war.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781681771991
Publisher:	Pegasus Books
Publication date:	08/09/2016
Series:	Achille Lefebvre Mysteries
Sold by:	SIMON & SCHUSTER
Format:	eBook
Pages:	352
File size:	568 KB

About the Author

Gary Inbinder’s 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. He is a member of both the Historical Novel Society and the Bewildering Stories Editorial Review Board. He lives in California.
Gary Inbinder's 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. He is a member of both the Historical Novel Society and the Bewildering Stories Editorial Review Board. He lives in California.

Editorial Reviews

06/06/2016
Set in 1890, Inbinder’s talky follow-up to 2014’s The Devil in Montmatre takes Insp. Achille Lefebvre to a crime scene in Paris’s Parc des Buttes-Chaumont. Hanging from the park’s so-called suicide bridge is a man with a Biblical verse about Judas’s betrayal and suicide, written in Cyrillic, pinned to his jacket. Achille learns from a Russian acquaintance of his, who translates the note, that the victim is a Russian emigrant involved in anarchist circles. Determining that the death is murder rather than suicide, Achille deploys a network of spies and informers from Paris’s underworld and works uneasily with an unreliable former colleague, now in the political division of the Paris police force, to uncover the violent terrorist network of which the murder is only an offshoot. Intriguing period details and personalities, notably the artist Henri Toulouse-Lautrec, enrich the plot. Unfortunately, Inbinder reveals the hanging’s perpetrators early on and elucidates most plot points through explanation rather than dramatization. As a result, both the investigation and the conspiracy lack suspense. Agent: Lukas Ortiz, Philip Spitzer Agency. (Aug.)

Publishers Weekly

Details take the reader back to the beginnings of the modern era, both in life and detective work.

Historical Novels Review

A wonderfully atmospheric period policiere.

Wall Street Journal

The setting is intriguing, and the plot especially so. It has tension, well-done action scenes and a likable main character.

Bookgasm

A wonderfully atmospheric period policiere.

Wall Street Journal

2016-05-24
His latest case could be Inspector Achille Lefebvre's finest hour, if it isn't his last.Of course, the body hanging off Suicide Bridge in the Parc des Buttes-Chaumont looks at first like a suicide. But Lefebvre (The Devil in Montmartre, 2014), versed as he is in the most modern forensic science 1890 can boast, has his photographer, Gilles, take shots of the note pinned to the body, and voilà—the fingerprints on the corpse fail to match those on the note. The Cyrillic script on the note sends him to Mme. Nazimova, a Russian bookseller connected to Paris's Slavic community. She identifies the deceased as Lev Dmitryevich Kadyshev, a Russian émigré with ties to known anarchists Peter Kropotkin and Louise Michel. His landlady admits that Kadyshev spent his evenings at the Lapin Agile in Montmartre with "a group of like-minded individuals." One of those individuals, Viktor Boguslavsky, is a chemist with access to an explosive his compatriots could use in mass bombings. So Lefebvre must leave the safety of the city walls through the Porte de Clignancourt to ask his most trusted unofficial deputy, famed outlaw Le Boudin, to set his silent, nearly invisible chiffoniers on the trail of the shadowy Russians. Out of respect for Lefebvre, the thief even offers his daughter, the prostitute Delphine, to help infiltrate the terrorist cell. Will the Inspector risk Delphine's life along with his own to save half of Paris from being blown to bits? A case every bit as baffling as the hero's debut. Here's hoping for another entry in this atmospheric series.

Kirkus Reviews