To find the way to the truth he must pick a path between the factions warring for control of the throne. But when the body of a young whore is found with macabre and ghastly mutilations that shock even the hardened city watch, he finds himself in a deadly web of intrigue, in which his chance companion – and eventual rival – is the notorious adventurer and seducer Giacomo Casanova.Īs another butchered corpse is discovered, the inspector finds his revolutionary past exposed and his life in grave danger. The Chevalier de Volnay is an upright, if rather uptight, man of great integrity and a success at his strange job. He is saved by the intervention of a young man, once himself a revolutionary, who is rewarded by a title and the post of Inspector for Strange and Unexplained Deaths. In 1757, the King is attacked and stabbed by the demented Robert-François Damiens as he climbs into his carriage in the courtyard of the Grand Trianon. The movement finds a natural home in the secretive and ritualistic Freemasons, whose major opponent, led by the reactionary Jesuits, becomes involved in increasingly ferocious political – and physical – battles. His influential mistress, confidante and advisor, Madame de Pompadour, helps him choose or demote ministers, and who, following the end of their sexual relationship, has set up the Maison Aux Cerfs, the house in Versailles where he entertains an increasingly youthful harem, bought or kidnapped for his pleasure – and to maintain her influence by ensuring no rival could supplant her.Īt the same time, a philosophical movement now known as the Enlightenment – its major exponents were Diderot, Voltaire and Rousseau – whose central doctrines were individual liberty and religious tolerance, emerges in opposition to the absolute monarchy and the fixed dogmas of the Roman Catholic Church. His long reign is descending into sexual excess, bordering on paedophilia. But the king is blamed for diplomatic, military and economic losses including the Austrian Netherlands and the ceding of New France in the Americas to Spain and Great Britain at the end of the disastrous Seven Years’ War. At court the pomp and magnificence of his predecessor, the Sun King Louis XIV, remains.
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