Historical mystery
(Aristide Ravel Mysteries #1)
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 . . .