Paris Was a Great Place to Get Poisoned in the 17th Century
In 1667, Paris was a filthy crime-ridden mess, and Nicolas de La Reynie was the man hired to clean it up. As Holly Tucker tells it in City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic and the First Police Chief of Paris, the state of the capital made the would-be glorious...
WXXI Connections Interviews Holly about City of Light, City of Poison
Torture. Sweeping police powers. Unlawful detention. Scandal at the highest level. We're talking about... Paris, roughly 340 years ago. In a remarkable new book, professor Holly Tucker tells the story of l'Affaire de les Poisons -- the Affair of the Poisons, which...
Barnes & Nobel Reviews City of Light!
The array of culprits and the goggling audience alike ranged from the most glittering members of France’s aristocracy to Paris’s dregs. That’s one reason the bizarre chain of events that kept France intermittently on edge and in a tizzy from 1670 to 1682, retold with...
New York Journal of Books Reviews City of Light
One can always trust the police to be dogged and to keep voluminous records, though they’re not always accurate. Holly Tucker was able to write her new book—City of Light, City of Poison: Murder, Magic and the First Police Chief of Paris—because Nicholas de La Reynie,...
Recent Comments