City of Light, City of Poison by Holly Tucker Review

Appointed to conquer the “crime capital of the world,” the first police chief of Paris faces an epidemic of murder in the late 1600s. Assigned by Louis XIV, Nicolas de La Reynie begins by clearing the streets of filth and installing lanterns throughout Paris, turning it into the City of Light.

The fearless La Reynie pursues criminals through the labyrinthine neighborhoods of the city. He unearths a tightly knit cabal of poisoners, witches, and renegade priests. As he exposes their unholy work, he soon learns that no one is safe from black magic—not even the Sun King. In a world where a royal glance can turn success into disgrace, the distance between the quietly back-stabbing world of the king’s court and the criminal underground proves disturbingly short. Nobles settle scores by employing witches to craft poisons and by hiring priests to perform dark rituals in Paris’s most illustrious churches and cathedrals.

As La Reynie continues his investigations, he is haunted by a single question: Could Louis’s mistresses could be involved in such nefarious plots? The pragmatic and principled La Reynie must decide just how far he will go to protect his king.

From secret courtrooms to torture chambers, City of Light, City of Poison is a gripping true-crime tale of deception and murder. Based on thousands of pages of court transcripts and La Reynie’s compulsive note-taking, as well as on letters and diaries, Tucker’s riveting narrative makes the fascinating, real-life characters breathe on the page.

This has been the year of mediocre nonfiction. None of the books I read were real standouts, despite the fact I did like most of them. But this book. This is the book I wished The Poisoner's Handbook was. I mean, I was happy enough with The Poisoner's Handbook as is, but I loved this one. It reminded me of the way Erik Larsen (of The Devil in the White City fame) writes.

I admit, though, when I first started the parts about Louis XIV's mistresses, I was a bit skeptical. For one thing, this book was not advertised as being about that, and didn't know how well Holly Tucker was going to connect it with the main story. While the connection was, in fact, tenuous, I was still fascinated by the dramatic stories about Louis XIV's mistresses. I felt like I was watching some trashy reality TV show, but a 100 times better because it's about one of the most powerful rulers in French history. I get that some people might be bored by these parts, but I personally really loved them.

And besides, the actual poison stuff was extremely easy to read, as well as the bits about the reform of Paris and the Parisian prison system. It was especially interesting to read about how coroners, often just surgeons or doctors back then, no special training was required to become one, were able to tell how people died just by basic scientific intuition. There were no fancy tests done to tell whether someone died of arsenic or snake venom, instead, they had to compare the effects of that specific poison to an already deceased confirmed poisoned body and tell by that. I always liked reading how people make do with what they have, especially in the days before technology.

And I ended up really liking Nicolas de la Reynie as a main character. He was the kind of guy you'd want to root for in detective novels, someone whose relentless pursual of the truth is admirable. He was truly one of a kind for his time period, especially since he didn't let class stand in the way of justice. While it is true that many of the noblewomen involved in the poison cases he studied did have more cushy prison lives than the women in the Third Estate who were arrested for the same crimes, and some of them got off on lighter sentences, he didn't wave their cases under the rug, and it's entirely likely he was frustrated by the inability of the Arsenal judges to see that a noblewoman of high birth could have committed such heinous crimes. And the cushy prison existence these women led was a matter of necessity, he knew that if he treated them cruelly then he would get nowhere and even perhaps be forced out of his job. De la Reynie really was one of the first in believing that justice is blind.

And oddly, I did still really like certain parts I probably would have hated if they were in a fictional book. For instance, I thought Mary-Anne Mancini was freaking bad-ass, to say the least. Her responses to the judges and her showing up with her husband in one hand and her boy-toy nephew in the other cracked me up. I wouldn't mind reading a book on her, and perhaps the rest of the Mancinis as well.

While reading I couldn't help but think of The Gentleman's Guide to Vice and Virtue, probably because both books took place roughly around the same time and some of the subject matter reminded me of it. And frankly, this book is what The Gentleman's Guide should have been like. It didn't need any strange Marina-esque plot or pirates or highwaymen to be interesting. In fact, I was actually a lot more entertained by this work of pure nonfiction than I was by that work of what is advertised as YA fluff fiction. The juicy stuff in here- the sex, the torture (prison torture before execution, not sex torture), the poison- is all stuff that could have been included in The Gentleman's Guide- well, maybe not the torture, but the sex and poison could have been wonderful. Hell, maybe Lee should have dropped the odd alchemy plot and gone with one based on the Affaire des Poisons. I mean, sure, she would have had to push it up a few decades from the late 1670s, early 1680s to the 1720s, but I could have forgiven that if it was based in something as interesting and little known to the general public as this instead of her going with basic early 18th century pop history- alchemy, pirates, Scientific Revolution/Enlightenment, Spain vs France (well, really England by proxy vs France). 

After reading this book I feel the sudden craving to read nonfiction. It happens sometimes, usually after I've finished a really good one. This is my favorite type of nonfiction to read- true, historical crime. Think the stuff Erik Larsen usually writes. The best of both worlds to me, especially since lately I've been unenthused with regular true crime nonfiction. I mean, when the most popular true crime book out now is about a string of arsons that happened to abandoned places nobody cares about with the main message being roughly the same thing that's been said over and over again, you have to wonder about the future of the genre. That being said, I am waiting for my library to get a copy of Killers of the Flower Moon, since I've been vaguely interested in that ever since it came out in April. Still, I'm actually in the mood to read, something I honestly haven't felt at all this month.

9 out of 10