Blood Royal: A Medieval CSI Team In Action
In Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris, medievalist Eric Jager returns to the world of medieval true crime stories that he popularized in The Last Duel.
On a cold night in November, 1407, a band of masked men assassinated Louis of Orleans, the powerful and unpopular brother of the intermittently insane King Charles, on a dark street in Paris. Blood Royal tells the stories of both the criminal investigation that followed and the subsequent impact of the assassination on French politics.
The first half of the book is told as a medieval murder mystery, based on working notes of the investigation written by Guillaume de Tignonville, provost of Paris and the law-enforcement officer responsible for finding who killed the royal duke. Except for the absence of modern forensic science, Tigonville's investigation techniques will be familiar to any fan of police procedurals: from interviewing witnesses to tracing physical clues. Jager maintains a high level of suspense throughout the enquiry as Tigonville and his men eliminate suspect after suspect until they uncover the shocking solution.
The second half of Blood Royal, while equally interesting, is more traditional history. Jager examines the power vacuum in the royal family left by Orleans' death, the civil war that followed, and Henry V's opportunistic invasion of France. He ends with the rise of Joan of Arc on the horizon.
Blood Royal will appeal to history buffs,* true crime fans, and anyone who loves historical mysteries or police procedurals.
A Lagniappe**
If historical true crime calls your name, I'd like to call your attention to two more excellent books. I enjoyed them both, but some how never got around to mentioning them on the blog.***
Holly Tucker's Blood Work: A Tale of Medicine and Murder in the Scientific Revolution is smart, riveting and occasionally gruesome. (There were passages that I would have read with my eyes closed if such a thing were possible.) Set in seventeenth century Paris, Blood Work tells the story of Jean-Baptiste Denis, a doctor who transfused calf's blood into a well-known Parisian madman in his search for medical answers. Several days later, the madman died and Denis was charged with murder. If you like your mystery and history tied up with big questions about the point where morality and science meet, this one's for you.
For those of you who prefer your historical crime with a little less gore, I highly recommend The Man Who Made Vermeers: Unvarnishing the Legend of Master Forger Han Van Meergeren by Jonathan Lopez. Smart, riveting and not at all gruesome, The Man Who Made Vermeers is a tale of forgers, Nazis and the glittering art world of the 1920s and 1930s. It's probably the only book ever nominated for both a national Award for Arts Writing and an Edgar for best non-fiction crime book.
*That would be you, right?
** Or, if you prefer, "But wait! There's more!"
***Sometimes it feels like blog post topics are like an impatient crowd. Most of them wait their turn, but one or two always elbow their way to the front.
Much of this review--minus the asides, the snarkiness, and the extras--previously appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.
Introducing Flat Arthur, aka His Grace the Duke of Wellington
Several weeks ago, fellow Historical Novel Society member Cora Lee shared an idea that she'd been having fun with for a few months and asked if any of us would like to play along. She took the idea of "Flat Stanley" and gave it a historical twist, creating "Flat Arthur"-- a two dimensional version of the multi-dimensional Arthur Wellesley, the first Duke of Wellington (1769-1842).*
Would I like to play along? Oh yeah! Over the next few months, Flat Arthur will travel with me hither and you. (Mostly to one library or another. Sorry, your Grace.) You can follow his travels and travails on my Tumblr site.
You doubtless know Wellesley as the general who defeated Napoleon at Waterloo, the feat for which he was created the 1st Duke of Wellington. Here are a few bits about Wellington that you may not know:
- He gave his name to knee-high rubber boots.** He probably did not inspire Beef Wellington
- He earned the nickname the "Iron Duke" during his first term as Prime Minister (1828-1830), thanks to his opposition to parliamentary reform. His position was so unpopular that he installed iron shutters on the windows of his home in London to keep angry crowds from smashing them.***
- Wellesley enjoyed his first military successes in India through a combination of talent and nepotism. He fought at the Battle of Seringapatam against Tipu Sultan in the Fourth Mysore War. His older brother, Richard Wellesley, who was Governor-General of India, promoted him from colonel to major-general and named him Governor of Seringapatam and Mysore, honors that caused friction with senior officers who were by-passed in his favor. Major-General Wellesley retroactively earned his promotion with a stunning victory at Assaye in the Second Maratha War.
Stay tuned for more Wellington tidbits and Flat Arthur sightings.
* Here's the blog post in which she introduced the idea for those of you who aren't familiar with the original "Flat Stanley".
**He could have given his name to something much less dignified than boots. The emperor Vespasian introduced public lavatories to Rome, where they are still known as vespasianos.
***The comparison with Margaret Thatcher, the Iron Lady, is irresistible. She embraced the nickname after it appeared in the headline of a piece in the Soviet newspaper Red Star, three years before she became Prime Minister. You can't blame her: her previous political nickname was "Thatcher the Milk Snatcher," earned when she cut free milk for schoolchildren from the budget during her tenure as Minister of Education. But I digress.
Dear Abigail
A million years ago, when I had first finished my doctoral dissertation and was tiptoeing toward writing about history for an non-academic audience, I headed off to a week-long writing class in Iowa. Along with the rest of my gear, I packed David McCullough's then newly released John Adams, on the assumption that it would keep me interested during the down moments but wouldn't distract me from the task at hand. Wrong. It kept me turning the pages like the most thrilling of thrillers.
Adams was fascinating, but the person who really caught my imagination was Abigail. I suspect I'm not the only one who felt that way. If you, too, are an Abigail fan, here's your chance to learn more:
In Dear Abigail: The Intimate Lives and Revolutionary Ideas of Abigail Adams and Her Remarkable Sisters, Diane Jacobs returns to the topic of smart women in revolutionary times that she previously explored in her biography of Mary Wollstonecraft.
Readers are familiar with Abigail Adams thanks to her sharp-witted and loving correspondence with her husband. But John Adams wasn't the only person who benefited from Abigail's pen. In Dear Abigail, Jacobs uses the correspondence of Abigail and her sisters to build a picture of what it was like to watch the American Revolution from the sidelines.
Mary, Abigail, and Betsy Smith were the daughters of a wealthy and influential Massachusetts minister. They were highly educated, well read, and opinionated--and married men who valued those qualities. In their letters they complain about gender inequalities and household problems. They discuss the intellectual issues of the time from the theological questions of the Great Awakening to the philosophical underpinnings of revolution. They arrange to be inoculated for smallpox--a controversial issue at the time. They share news about the war. They worry about their parents, their husbands, and their children.
Much of the book deals with the day-to-day difficulties of the war. Of the three, Abigail suffered the most. (Some of the most poignant passages of the book show her struggling alone with a difficult pregnancy and ultimate stillbirth.) But all of them deal with shortages, lack of information, and fear.
Dear Abigail is the perfect pendant to McCullough's John Adams: the American Revolution as seen through the eyes of three of its Founding Mothers.
Much of this review first appeared in Shelf Awareness for Readers.