Aristide Ravel Mysteries
1 primary work • 4 total works
Book 2
Amidst the sights and sounds of revolutionary Paris, Aristide Ravel, the enigmatic and charming freelance investigator for the Paris police, comes to the aid of Jeannette Moineau, an illiterate servant girl, when she is accused of poisoning the master of the house where she works. The case against her seems clear, but Aristide is convinced that Jeannette is innocent. Proving her innocence, however, is another story. In a household brimming with bickering and fighting, everyone seems to have a motive and opportunity. But as family members begin to turn up dead, the list of suspects is rapidly dwindling - and tensions are rising. Aristide scours the streets of Paris for clues to free the defenceless servant girl. But, in the dissolute post revolutionary Paris, where gold is scarce, finding information can lead to costly - and dangerous demands.
Paris, 1796. Aristide Ravel, freelance undercover police investigator, is confronted with a double murder in a fashionable apartment. The victims are Celie Montereau, daughter of a very wealthy family, and the man who was blackmailing her. Celie's enigmatic and bitter friend Rosalie points Aristide towards Philippe Aubry, a young man with a violent past who had been desperately in love with Celie. But the evidence says otherwise and, despite his reluctant falling for Rosalie, Aristide suspects she knows far more than she will say. When the evidence starts to point to Rosalie herself, Aristide knows he must find out who Rosalie is protecting and why, before he can get justice for Celie and save Rosalie from the guillotine. From Paris's gritty back alleys to its glittering salons, through the heart of feverish, decadent post-revolutionary France, Aristide is led into a puzzle of hidden secrets, crimes of passion, and long-nurtured hatreds. The prequel to A Treasury of Regrets.
A murdered man is found in a Parisian cemetery in 1786, where struggling writer Aristide Ravel recognizes the strange symbols surrounding the body to be Masonic.