The Black Tower

The Black Tower is a historical mystery set in Paris in the early 1800's. I'm not a huge fan of historical fiction, or "what-if" historical fiction, but I found this book pretty entertaining. The protagonist, Hector Carpentier, becomes the unwitting Watson to a dark, mysterious Holmes. It's not high art, but I found the book fast-paced and quite gripping. It also had some notes of dark humor, giving it the feel of an episode of Law & Order set in 19th century Paris. It's interesting to note that Vidocq, the mysterious detective, was a historical figure who played a role in the birth of modern criminology.

I'd recommend The Black Tower to fans of police procedurals and French history.

This is a mystery about the Restoration Era of France, taking place in 1818 Paris. The main character is a doctor, the son of the doctor given charge of the health of Louis-Charles, the dauphin, known as Louis the Seventeenth after the Bourbon Restoration. The doctor is accosted by the Inspector Vidocq after someone is found murdered with a paper containing his name and address inside his undergarments. They are then called upon to determine if a young man is Louis-Charles or an imposter. It is well-written and the author throws in a few antique phrases, a few French phrases, to give the reader the impression of antiquity - but, there are a few problems linguistically that make these insertions awkward. However, it is a fast read and the time period leads to some uniqueness.

In The Black Tower, Louis Bayard overcomes two very noticeable problems: first, writing a first-person memoir in the present tense; second, using amnesia as a central plot point. Perhaps some will enjoy the immediacy of present-tense narration, but in this case I felt that it didn't really make sense. If a man is telling the story of an important period of his life, the past-tense just plain seems more logical. And amnesia is always a bit of a groaner. It's very difficult to sell that particular condition after so many years of novelists milking it.

But what impressed me about this book is that these two gripes of mine really did fall by the wayside as the story unfolded. It's not the kind of mystery in which the reader can gather clues and make a guess at "whodunit." It's a mystery in the way the revelations unfold, the narrator learning things as he goes. Throughout, there are plenty of twists and turns, and a very satisfying conclusion. Bayard mixes fact and fiction admirably, and he has a keen ear for dialogue. Vidocq, the vulgar detective, who's brilliance we see second-hand in a similar vein to the Sherlock Holmes stories (here, too, the narrator/side-kick is a doctor), has some great quips, his curses well-placed within the historical French landscape, and his insights are very convincing.

The Black Tower, despite a few quibbles, ended up being a great read (and a rather fast one), and I think it'll satisfy enthusiasts of both modern mysteries and historical fiction.

Historicals are among my favorite types of novel. Not so much the sort where Goody Smith saves Plymouth colony from evil minions of some corrupt government and oh, look! Isn't that Miles Standish over there under the spreading chestnut tree? But rather, the sort where true history and fiction are joined so seamlessly that you actually find yourself thinking that the author's creations were historical figures. Since I'm a huge fan of the late Dorothy Dunnett, my bar is set pretty high, which is part of the reason why I only awarded four stars to Bayard for "The Black Tower." Another part? His prose, though good, isn't the sort that keeps you turning pages obsessively.

That's not a bad thing. He's a good, solid novelist, and he has created a believable story about the possibility that the son of Marie Antoinette and Louis the Sixteenth actually survived the French revolution and the years of terror that came after. It's a potent tale; stories about lost princes or princesses stir the imagination. The real-life story of Anna Anderson continues to captivate people in spite of the DNA testing which has proved conclusively that she was not a Romanov, much less Anastasia. Kudos to Bayard for tackling a lesser known story, and giving us a pair of unlikely heroes in the (fictional) Hector Carpentier and the (quite real) Eugène François Vidocq, the man who in 1812 created the Sûreté, which has since served as the model for Scotland Yard and the FBI.

While I did find myself pulled into the story, it didn't really come alive for me until about halfway through. And I was tossed right back out again with the explanation of how the Dauphin was smuggled out of the tower because I found it all a little too much of a stretch. But at the same time it wasn't enough to make me stop reading, which proves the strength of the prose, I imagine. My only other complaint is that the character of Charles, the young man who may or may not be the Dauphin, never really came to life for me. I really never got any sense of who he had become. And in fact, none of the characters truly resonated for me, though they were by no means badly drawn.

Do I recommend this book unreservedly? No. But I do recommend it. If you're a fan of historicals, I think you'll find it well worth your time.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW -- nothing more than the publisher has already disclosed

This is a book that grabs you from sentence one and doesn't let go until the end. Louis Bayard has accomplished something rare in historical fiction: using a first person account, he manages to put the reader in a time and place, in this case 19th century Paris, without resorting to long descriptions the narrator wouldn't bother to make. His Paris comes alive organically, with all of its characters -- from the poor living in rat-infested squalor, to the petite bourgeousie, the nobility, and criminals and royalty -- and describes the smells, the monuments, the political climate, the weather and so many other period details so as to make you feel like you are there. That he also writes beautifully and has crafted a story that unfolds exquisitely and at a perfect pace makes this a great read and one I will want to return to again and again.

The narrator in question is Hector Carpentier, a doctor of sorts, who has frittered away his family's cash and whose mother has turned their home into a boarding house. He is drafted into helping solve a murder by feared police inspector Vidocq, an actual historical character, and in the process discovers that Louis-Charles (Louis the 17th), the son of Louis XVI and Marie Antoinette, believed killed as a child by revolutionaries under Napoleon, may still be alive.

While the real star of the book is Restoration Paris itself, Vidocq is a close second in all his animal ferocity and uncanny brilliance. Think a French Sherlock Holmes with an edge. The supporting characters are fleshed out beautifully, both men and women, rich and poor, and I'm not describing them because their identity and characters unfold with the twists and turns in the story and are best savored without knowing too much going in. Every time I thought the story had nowhere to go, it went somewhere new, and the characters continued to develop in their complexity and nuance.

At last the Vine program has provided fiction about which I can rave. This is historical fiction at its best.