The Black Tower

<p><strong>From the author of <em>Courting Mr. Lincoln.</em> </strong><strong>In <em>The Black Tower </em> Louis Bayard deftly interweaves political intrigue epic treachery cover-ups and conspiracies into a gripping portrait of family redemption--and brings to life an indelible portrait of the mighty and profane Eug��ne Fran��ois Vidocq history's legendary investigator.</strong></p><p>Vidocq. Master of disguise and chief of a newly created plainclothes police force Vidocq is a man whose name sends terror rippling through the Parisian underworld of 1818--and the inconsequential life of Hector Carpentier is violently shaken when Vidocq storms into it. A former medical student living in his mother's Latin Quarter boardinghouse Hector finds himself dragged into a dangerous mystery surrounding the fate of the dauphin the ten-year-old son of King Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette presumed to have suffered a cruel death years earlier in Paris's dreaded Temple. But the truth of what happened may be even more shocking--and it will fall to an aimless young man and the most feared detective in Paris to see justice done for a frightened little boy in a black tower . . . no matter what the cost.</p>