"A novel" - cover.

"Winner of the Hercule Poirot Prize" - cover.

Translation of De wraak van Baudelaire.

Includes bibliographical references.

It is 1870, and Paris is in turmoil. As the social and political turbulence of the Franco-Prussian War roils the city, workers starve to death while aristocrats seek refuge in orgies and séances. The Parisians are trapped like rats in their beautiful city, but a series of gruesome murders suddenly captures their fascination. The killer leaves lines from the recently deceased Charles Baudelaire's controversial anthology Les Fleurs du Mal on each corpse, written in the poet's exact handwriting. Commissioner Lefèvre, a lover of poetry and a veteran of the Algerian war, is on the case. Did Baudelaire rise from the grave? The plot dramatically appears to extend as far as the court of Emperor Napoleon III.