Susanne Alleyn

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Hardcover: 288 pages
Publisher: St. Martin's Minotaur
List: US$23.95
ISBN-13: 9780312343639
ISBN-10: 0312343639

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Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police agent and investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims are Célie Montereau, the daughter of a wealthy and influential family, and the man who was blackmailing her.

A friend of Célie's, Rosalie Clément, an enigmatic, bitter young woman, provides Aristide with intelligence that steers him toward a young man, Philippe Aubry. Aubry has a violent past and was in love with Célie, but further inquiry reveals that--according to an eyewitness--he cannot have been her murderer.

As time passes, Aristide finds himself reluctantly falling in love with Rosalie, although he suspects that she knows more about the murders than she will say. From the gritty back alleys of Paris to its glittering salons and cafés, through the heart of the feverish, decadent society of postrevolutionary France, Aristide’s investigation leads him into a puzzle involving hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds.

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"Susanne Alleyn's Game of Patience is a well-crafted historical mystery, authentic in every detail. Wonderfully entertaining."
--Sandra Gulland, author, The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.

"An engrossing, richly detailed whodunit set in edgy, post-revolutionary Paris . . . I was riveted."
--Karen Harper, author, The Fatal Fashione and The Last Boleyn

"Post-revolutionary Paris is the setting for this sophisticated and stylish novel, a true mystery, penned by American author Susanne Alleyn, who creates the atmosphere of those pre-Napoleonic days that challenges the skills of Caleb Carr of The Alienist fame."
--Big Sleep Books

"This book satisfies on many levels."
--The Poisoned Pen Bookstore (April 2006 History/Mystery pick)

And from the various international versions of Amazon.com (Canada, UK, France, Germany, Japan)

After A Far Better Rest (2000), an homage to Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Alleyn returns to postrevolutionary Paris in her second novel, a taut police procedural. In the fall of 1796, police spy Aristide Ravel, who's haunted by fears that he has helped send dozens of innocent victims to the guillotine, and his employer, Commissaire Brasseur, investigate the slaying of Jean-Louis Saint-Ange, a property owner who lived on his rents, and Saint-Ange's ex-lover, Célie Montereau. Saint-Ange had apparently been extorting money from aristocratic families, and few, including his colorful porter, Grangier, mourn his demise. Despite qualms about "mistakenly being the cause of a man's death," Aristide dutifully interviews anxious former associates of Célie and her well-to-do parents in search of the truth. Full of authentic historical detail, ranging from the rise of General Bonaparte to the antics of flamboyant incroyables, the story builds to an emotionally charged climax in which Aristide reveals painful secrets from his own past.
--Publishers Weekly


The French Revolution may have resulted in liberty for some, but Alleyn's latest dispatch from Revolutionary France (A Far Better Rest, 2000) examines the lives of those left behind. Police investigator Aristide Ravel brings knowledge and sympathy to the double murder of a wealthy young woman, Celie Montereau, in the apartment of a second victim, bachelor Louis Saint-Ange, who "lived on his rents"--profits from systematic extortion. Although her father, prominent Citizen Montereau, denies it, Celie appears to have been one of his victims. Aristide questions her young brother, her elderly aunt, who refuses to call anyone "Citizen," and an unlikely friend of hers, Citizeness Rosalie Clement, a genteel and impoverished woman acquainted with disappointments far beyond naive young Celie's experience. Finding himself drawn to the candid and bitter Rosalie, Aristide discovers against his will that there's more to her life than her quiet misery at a down-at-heels boarding house. The double murder he's investigating, an apparently unrelated series of murders of fashionable men, and several unhappy love affairs, all end by coming together on the guillotine's scaffold. Alleyn simultaneously considers the destruction caused by the Revolution as well as the smaller domestic mysteries of love lost and betrayed. The result can be compelling if sometimes over-ambitious and pretentious.
--Kirkus Reviews


When two people are found murdered in post-revolutionary Paris, police agent Aristide Ravel investigates. Ravel discovers the male victim was blackmailing the other victim, a wealthy young woman named Célie. Célie’s friend, Rosalie, insists that the young woman’s fiancé had to have committed the murders in a crime of passion. Aubry had apparently uncovered Célie’s seduction and pregnancy by the blackmailer and has no alibi for the night of the murders. Ravel is attracted to the enigmatic Rosalie, but the more he delves into the crime, he thinks Rosalie knows far more than she’s telling and may be somehow involved. In the gritty back-streets of Paris, Ravel struggles to find the truth and save Rosalie from the growing threat of the guillotine.

The Paris of 1796 comes alive in Alleyn’s fast-paced novel. Readers will be surprised by the ending, with its twisted scenario of rape and revenge.
--Diane Scott Lewis, The Historical Novels Review


ALLEYN’S NOVEL, GAME OF PATIENCE, A WINNER

Susanne Alleyn, who lives in the late Dr. Early’s house on Allen Street in Hudson, has written a historical mystery novel titled Game of Patience, published by Thomas Dunne Books, which is indeed a winner.

To take the measure of Alleyn’s writing, one would have to go past today’s fine mystery writers and reach back to three great whodunit writers of the first half of the 20th century--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie.

The novel is riveting along its circuitous route and startling denouement. It goes forward, backward, sideward and nearly upside down in its intense cliffhanger brilliance. It reminds in a way of Rameau’s Tragedie Lyrique “Les Boréades” of 1764 in its vivid expression and variety of flow. It is a work that one would almost feel compelled to read in one sitting, the reader unable to resist the mystery puzzle Alleyn creates.

Alleyn brings knowing historical detail in the post-revolutionary Paris setting. At one point, the spill of a chamber pot thrown from an upper window just grazes one of the characters rather humorously. Mozart in 1778 remarked that “Paris is one great pig sty, one has to walk the streets with a perfumed handkerchief and watch out for what may come down from above.” So some things in Paris in the 18th century prevailed during the monarchy, the Terror and the post-revolutionary period.

The characterization in the novel is superb. Aristide Ravel, the undercover police agent, entirely a creation of Alleyn, is the kind of charismatic, intensely human detective that is central to all good mystery writing. So good indeed, that one wishes for a series of Ravel novels from Alleyn’s pen. The executioner, Henri Sanson, drawn from life, is a tragic figure, and Rosalie Clément, another real life character, was the most complex creation in this thriller.

There is a rich theatricality in Alleyn’s writing. Although she could not capture the art or music that abounded in her chosen period, the book surely lends itself to being a stunning TV dramatization or, better still, a movie. Then the glory of music and art in Paris of the period and the great architecture of the “City of Light” would wrap this marvelous book splendidly and the entire work would become a cinematic coup du theatre.
--John Paul Keeler, Register Star/Hudson Valley Newspapers


Alleyn brought revolutionary-era France to life vividly in her debut novel, A Far Better Rest (2000), a reimagining of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and she revisits the era in this mystery. Aristide Ravel, an associate of the police force, is called in when Louis Saint-Ange, a man of means but questionable repute, is found murdered alongside a young woman. At first Ravel and his associate, Commissaire Brasseur, focus on Saint-Ange, a blackmailer with dirt on many upper-class denizens, but when they identify the girl as Celie Montereau, a young woman from a wealthy family, they begin to dig into the girl's past only to discover she bore an illegitimate child and had a clandestine lover. Ravel and Brasseur track the young man, but even as the evidence mounts against him, Ravel fears he might be innocent and loathes the idea of convicting an innocent man in an climate that has already seen so much bloodshed. Grounded by a complex, haunted hero, the suspense in this layered mystery builds slowly but reaches a breakneck speed.
--Booklist


It is 1796 in a Paris trying to regain some semblance of order after the Reign of Terror (1793-94). Aristide Ravel investigates major crimes for his friend Police Commissaire Brasseur. Already doubting the justice system that is in place, Ravel must delve into the double murders of a young girl from a wealthy family and a man blackmailing her. The story plays out like the card game of patience with Ravel finding one way to sort out the facts of the case and then shuffling them in another way to reach an entirely different conclusion. This is a true puzzle mystery, with the detective reexamining the facts several times until the solution is found. Alleyn knows her French Revolution, creates a complex brain-teaser of a mystery, and excels in making her characters believable. In short, this book has everything; recommended.
--Library Journal

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Game of Patience opens in 1796 post-revolutionary Paris. A police "investigator" (as he prefers to be called, rather than an informer or a spy) by the name of Aristide Ravel is called upon to assist in solving a double murder case. The two victims, an extortionist named Saint-Ange, and a respectable young woman, Celie Montereau, at first appear to have no connection. As Ravel begins his investigation, searching for clues and interrogating witnesses, he unravels a case far more complicated than what he originally suspected.

The synopsis I just gave barely touches upon the plot of the book, but as is the case with many mysteries, it's tough to give an accurate overview without giving away the story. To avoid spoiling the entire book for any potential readers, we'll just leave it at that, and focus on my opinions of the work.

It took me a while to warm up to this story. The language is a bit rough for those of us who don't speak a word of French. Not that there is an overwhelming amount of French vocabulary included in the story, but rather it's the foreign names and places that are involved in the plot that I got hung up on. It's hard (for me at least) to envision a place that I can't envision pronouncing accurately. Once I got past that however, I got sucked into a who done it murder mystery that had me pretty baffled until the end.

Alleyn is an expert on French history and culture, that much is blatantly obvious from reading this book. She weaves her knowledge in skillfully, and is able to transport her readers to another place and time as they read. One that to many readers, is completely new and alien, yet they will quickly begin to feel at home there, as I did. There are several characters that we become intimately acquainted with throughout the story; a few are quite endearing, while others are basically revolting.

Without giving much away, I do have to say that the ending of this book is one of the most satisfying endings I've read in a while. All loose ends are wrapped up into a tight bow, and all unanswered questions are at last explained. The reasoning and logic included at the end of the story make the entire book worthwhile...it's a perfect ending to an all around good read.
-- "Book of the Moment," MySpace.com book reviewer

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First Chapter

9 Brumaire, Year V of the Republic
(October 30, 1796)

Aristide did not often set foot in the Place de Grève. It was an ill-omened place, the Golgotha of Paris, the site of uncounted butcheries across five centuries, and he loathed public executions.

He shivered and cast a fleeting glance toward the guillotine, waiting high above the heads of the crowd, as the sharp breeze of a Parisian October whipped lank dark hair into his eyes. Perhaps, he brooded, not for the first time, he was oversensitive for a man who worked for the police. Police officials, his friend and employer Brasseur among them, did their duty and washed their hands of the affair, leaving the rest to the Criminal Tribunal and the public prosecutor. But the police and the law courts, he thought, in their determined efforts to maintain order in a city still unsettled after seven years of revolutionary upheaval, could sometimes be wrong.

He elbowed his way onward, through the clamorous crowd of errand boys in smocks, domestics in shabby castoff finery, and craftsmen in work aprons who slouched about, playing truant from their trades for half an hour’s free entertainment. The muddy square between the city hall and the Seine swarmed with spectators, pushing, joking. Here and there a spruce bourgeois or stylish incroyable, flaunting the exaggerated fashions of the season, blossomed like a hothouse flower amid the weeds. Though Aristide wore no tricolor sash, the mark of a police inspector or commissaire, they made way for him, reluctantly parting ranks before the austere black suit that instantly placed him among such traditional dignitaries as police, civil servants, or magistrates.

He shouldered his way through the spectators until he could push no farther against the eager, humming barricade of bodies. He could see well enough; he stood half a head taller than most of his neighbors. The guillotine loomed above him against the leaden sky like a doorway to nowhere. Two men, silently overseen by a third in a fashionable black frock coat and tall hat, hovered about it, brisk and impassive, tightening ropes, testing moving parts, greasing grooves and hinges. Aristide offered a silent prayer of thanks that at least the guillotine was far swifter and gentler than the punishment meted out to murderers and bandits in the decades before the Revolution.

The crowd stirred and muttered, growing bored with idling. A few fights broke out. Rough-voiced street peddlers sold rolls, oranges, vinegar-water, hot chocolate, and cheap brandy.

A pair of mounted gendarmes appeared at the edge of the square. Behind them creaked the executioner’s cart and the murmur grew into an uproar. Those who often attended such free public entertainment self-importantly pointed out the approaching actors: there the attending priest in civilian costume; there the old executioner, come out of retirement for the day, Old Sanson who had topped the king, and Danton, and Robespierre, and so many others, in those disagreeable years 1793 and 1794; there his assistants. Young Sanson, the new master executioner, they told one another, was already waiting on the scaffold: a good-looking, well-made young fellow, wasn’t he?

In the cart a splash of crimson, a smock the color of blood. The central performers of the show stood between executioner and priest. One of the three condemned men had fainted and was lying nearly out of sight in the bottom of the cart.

A shout pierced the crowd’s babble.

“I am guilty!”

The man in the crimson smock leaned forward across the cart’s rail, straining at his guard’s tight grip on his bound arms.

“I am guilty, citizens! But Lesurques is innocent!”

“That’s Courriol,” said someone in the crowd, “one of the bandits....”

Aristide swallowed and squeezed his hands together behind his back as a chill crept from the pit of his stomach to the center of his chest. When even a confessed killer insisted upon his comrade’s innocence...

The second man stood erect in the cart, his pale, youthful face betraying neither fear nor hope. His fair hair was cropped short for the blade, but unlike his companion, he wore no red shirt, the emblem of a condemned murderer; waistcoat, culotte, shirt cut open at the neck---all were spotless white.

Absence of the usual formalities betrayed some belated sympathy on the public prosecutor’s part. What must it be like, Aristide wondered, to live in doubt, to have to ask yourself for the rest of your life whether, in the performance of your duty, you had condemned an innocent man?

“Lesurques is innocent!” Courriol repeated. His crimson smock fluttered in the wind. “I am guilty!”

The cart creaked to a stop before the scaffold. Above, Young Sanson waited silently, hands at his sides, ignoring the wind’s bite.

A raindrop stung Aristide’s cheek. Mathieu had died on just such a day as this, he recalled, a bleak autumn morning with a cold, leaden sky and spattering rain. Three years ago...the last day of October 1793. Perhaps under the same steel blade. He closed his eyes for an instant at the touch of another cold drop.

The assistant executioners lowered the cart’s tailboard and lugged the unconscious man up the narrow steps. Carefully impassive, they strapped him to the plank and slid it forward beneath the blade. The wooden collar clapped down over his neck. Young Sanson stepped to the machine’s right-hand upright and tugged at a lever.

Aristide blinked. Did anyone ever see the blade in the midst of its fall? Yet there it hung, at rest at the bottom of the uprights, smeared with glistening red, and blood was weeping between the boards of the scaffold onto the sawdust below.

“I am guilty! Lesurques is innocent!” shouted Courriol as hands reached for him and swung him down from the cart. He struggled a moment, twisting about to shout once again to the crowd as the executioners marched him toward the waiting plank. “Lesurques is innocent!”

Aristide watched, motionless. Here, at least, simple justice had taken its course. But God help us all, he thought, if the criminal court has condemned a blameless man.

“Lesurques is---”

The crowd grew silent as Lesurques climbed the steps. Upon reaching the platform, he paused.

“I am innocent of this crime. May God forgive my judges as I have forgiven them.”

For the third time, the great blade scraped and thudded home.

Aristide thrust his way past the gawkers and paused at the edge of the square, gasping for breath. At last he found an upturned skiff on the riverside and dropped down on it, elbows on knees, staring into the murky shallows of the Seine. Had the police he worked for, so determined to keep the peace, instead been so horribly wrong?

He clasped cold hands before him, shivering suddenly, not from the chill river breeze alone. Men made mistakes; it was the natural way of things. Impossible that you would never make a mistake, accuse wrongly, perhaps unwittingly destroy a life...

He sat brooding a while longer, watching the stray raindrops ripple across the river as it slid silently past. Forget this, he told himself at last. You can do nothing about it. Even if you could somehow learn the truth, and clear his name, he will still be beyond help. There is nothing you can do. He sighed, pushed himself to his feet, and turned his steps westward along the quay, letting the walk and the chill breeze calm him.

Like a great ship, the Île de la Cité parted the river, the cathedral at one end of the island and the Law Courts at the other. As Aristide passed along the shore of the Right Bank, the brooding medieval towers of the Conciergerie, the ancient prison attached to the courts, caught and held his gaze. All his misgivings returned in a rush.

What if I, too, in my time, have sent innocent men to that place, and even to the executioner?

Copyright © 2006 by Susanne Alleyn