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 . . .