Perhaps the most vital intelligence it is necessary to know about me is that I am, in fact, fictional. But I am the central personage in two novels (with more on the way), which is more than most nonfictional personages can say, no?
I was born in 1758 in the beautiful city of Bordeaux. After a number of distressing--to say the least--events that colored my childhood and youth, and half a dozen years at a boarding school where I was the object of lively but scornful interest because of a family name that instantly recalled scandal and disgrace, I chose at last to make my home in Paris, where I still reside.
I perform certain investigative services for the city's police forces on a case-by-case basis, and occasionally for private individuals, in return for a modest living. A few of my adventures are depicted in the following novels by Mme. Susanne Alleyn:
Game of Patience [St Martin's Minotaur, 2006]
Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police agent and investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims prove to be Célie Montereau, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family, and the man who was blackmailing her.
Rosalie Clément, an enigmatic, bitter young woman who was a friend of Célie's, provides Aristide with intelligence that steers him toward a young man, Philippe Aubry. Aubry has a violent past and was in love with Célie, but further inquiry reveals that--according to an eyewitness--he cannot have been her murderer.
As time passes, Aristide finds himself reluctantly falling in love with Rosalie, although he suspects that she knows more about the murders than she will say. From the gritty back alleys of Paris to its glittering salons and cafés, through the heart of the feverish, decadent society of postrevolutionary France, Aristide’s investigation leads him into a puzzle involving hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds.
"Grounded by a complex, haunted hero, the suspense in this layered mystery builds slowly but reaches a breakneck speed."
-- Booklist
"Alleyn knows her French Revolution, creates a complex brain-teaser of a mystery, and excels in making her characters believable. In short, this book has everything; recommended."
-- Library Journal
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A Treasury of Regrets [St Martin's Minotaur, 2007]
For police agent and investigator Aristide Ravel, the teeming streets and alleyways of Paris are a constant source of activity. And in the unruly climate of 1797, when gold and food are scarce, citizens will stop at very little to get what they need.
When Jeannette Moineau, an illiterate servant girl, is accused of poisoning the master of the house where she works, Ravel cannot believe she is guilty of the crime. With stubborn witnesses, a mysterious white powder, and stolen goods all stacked against her, however, he knows it will not be easy to clear her of the charges. But he finds an unexpected ally in Laurence, a young widow of the house, whose past surprisingly intersects his own.
In a large household brimming with bickering and resentment, everyone seems to have a motive for poisoning old Martin Dupont. But as more family members begin to turn up dead, the list of suspects rapidly dwindles. Tensions rise and Ravel and Laurence must probe the secrets of the city’s crafty politicians and confidence artists for clues to clear Jeannette’s name. Finding information, though, in dissolute post-revolutionary Paris, can lead to costly and dangerous demands.
"Alleyn skillfully depicts her characters' flaws and strengths while plotting a fine puzzle mystery. If your patrons enjoy historicals and have not yet discovered Alleyn, put her latest on the must-read list."
-- Library Journal (starred review)
Library Journal has also included A Treasury of Regrets in its list of the best genre fiction of 2007. Mon dieu!
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The Cavalier of the Apocalypse [St Martin's Minotaur, July 21, 2009]
In the icy winter of 1786, 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 during the last decades of the eighteenth century, but no one, including penniless writer Aristide Ravel, expects to find a man with his throat cut, surrounded by strange Masonic symbols, in the churchyard of St. André des Arts. Already suspected of subversive activities, Ravel must evade the ever-present police and clear his name of murder. His search amid the city’s literary and intellectual demimonde--with the aid of friends who, he quickly learns, may not be all that they seem--leads him into a bewildering tangle of conspiracy, secret societies, and imminent revolution, which grows only more complex when the corpse disappears . . .
A prequel to the Aristide Ravel mysteries Game of Patience and A Treasury of Regrets. Coming from St. Martin's in July 2009.
To learn more about Mme. Alleyn herself, kindly visit her MySpace page from the link in the Friends list below, or her author website at www.susannealleyn.com.)
Those who have done me the honor of reading about my adventures may be interested in visiting the Pics (photo album) link at the left of this page, below the space generally reserved for the page owner's portrait; there you may see a few photographs of Parisian sites in which scenes from the novels took place. They are, alas, for the most part images of the sites as they look in the twenty-first century, and not as they were in my own day, but rest assured that what the twenty-first-century streets lack in quaintness, they make up for with their far superior cleanliness . . .
