The Black Tower

The Black Tower is a clever, well-researched and written historical detective novel about Hector Carpentier, a medical student who lives with his widowed mother in her home in Paris's Latin Quarter. When a scrap of paper with his name written on it is found on the body of a dead man just three blocks from his home, Hector finds himself enmeshed in a dangerous, confusing investigation, led by clever police detective named Vidocq.

Soon, the investigation has them trudging through the murky, tragic past.

This is a well written novel about a fascinating time period and an even more fascinating historical "mystery" (the fate of Louis XVII, Marie Antoinette's son).

The trick with historical fiction is to make the might have been the must have happened! Louis Bayard not only spins a fine tale in the Black Tower, he brings it to life so that we really believe that France's "lost prince" may have survived.

Historical and fictional characters are brilliantly intertwined and the edges blurred enough in this fast paced story from the French revolution. At the beginning of the novel we find the infamous Parisian "detective" (such concepts did not exist of course) Ridoq - half Sherlock Holmes, half psychopath - investigating the strange murder of a Parisian and tracking down our "hero" Dr. Charpentier. Charpentier is dragged into an investigation that delves into what happened in the "Black Tower" to the son of Louis and Marie-Antoinette.

This is a thriller / detective story of the highest order with plenty of twists and turns, yet written in an extremely interesting way. Read it!

This work will grab your attention the moment you open the cover, and will capture you until the last page is turned. Broad in scope and grand in detail, the plot line will ensure satisfying reading.

The Black Tower exemplifies the increasingly popular genre of literary mysteries, well-crafted novels that create suspense without compromising artistic integrity. As in his previous novels, Bayard has chosen a historical setting, complete with famous persons from that time period, as the backdrop for this whodunit.

The story opens with excerpts from a journal, describing the cruel imprisonment and physical deterioration of the Dauphin Louis-Charles, the young son of the recently deposed Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, who is rumored to have died in the Black Tower. From there we flash forward in time and learn, through the first-person narration of medical student Hector Carpentier, about the murder of a man carrying a note with Hector's name on it. Inspector Vidocq, a lovable rogue modeled on another real-life figure who is often credited as being the first modern private investigator, senses that the murdered man's tie to Hector is the secret to unraveling the murder and forces Hector to support the investigation. When they discover that it is really Hector's diseased father (also a doctor named Hector) that the dead man was seeking, the investigation puts them on the trail of a labyrinthine plot to murder another young man who may or may not be the long-lost Dauphin.

I would recommend The Black Tower to any mystery lover who has an interest in historical settings and conspiracies, as Bayard breathes life into early nineteenth-century Paris with his strong research and insightful prose. His fastidious development of setting and character do, however, rein in the pace of this mystery, and the middle third lacks the momentum of the tantalizing beginning and the frenetic ending. That said, the deliciously ambiguous resolution of the novel becomes all-the-more stimulating because of the careful groundwork Bayard establishes during these introspective middle passages. And, in the end, Louis Bayard's artistic blurring of mystery and historical fiction proves to be a winning formula that makes me want to explore his other works, such as The Pale Blue Eye: A Novel (P.S.).

I started to read other reviews and it appears everyone is a critic, but its not about comparing one person's ability to make historical fiction come alive in comparison to your favorite author. Everyone is thinking WAY too much. Just read the book and tell us whether you enjoyed it.

Well I read the book and loved it. Initially I got impatient like I do with almost every novel. There were times when I wondered about accuracy of things, or started to try and poke holes in the thinking. Then it just swept me away and I couldn't put it down.

What more is there to ask of a book? Maybe I learned a few things about French history too!