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5 of 5 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
a wholly exhilarating read, August 14, 2009
This review is from: The Cavalier of the Apocalypse (Hardcover)
What a pleasure to read this marvelous book! What dismay to have it end.... and with a twist that stuns the reader's brain. Who could've killed poor Saint Landry, who? I asked as I crept through the streets of 18th century Paris. But Susanne Alleyn, in her infinite creativity, comes up with the perfect assailant. Well, no more about that intriguing killer--I won't be a spoiler. I'll just say that all of Alleyn's characters are beautifully imagined and true to their era: Aristide, in particular, with his traumatic past--and troubled present.
I won't reiterate the plot: you can read the starred review in PW. But I do want to offer what I like about this novel--aside from the fact that I'm in love with this period of history, and with the French enlightenment and pre-revolutionary period, and oh--with Paris itself. I do love the way Aristide skulks into the sleasy, smoky, noisy literary cafes, and sludges through the scary, winding streets. I love the cemeteries--their stinks and slimes, not to mention a dead body with its throat slit and skin tatooed (so to speak)with eerie symbols. I love the way the author wholly focuses on the mystery, with no extraneous subplots: we shadow the bumbling, engaging Aristide (who just wants to be a scribbler of seditious pamphlets--not a sleuth) every surprising minute of the way. A few cul-de-sacs, yes, into interesting backstory, along with an bit of unrequited love story; but mostly the novel speeds inexorably toward its end: a solution to the crime. Alleyn doesn't let us put the book down! I'm exhausted, but exhilarated.
Oh, and I'm highly intrigued with the occasional real historical person our antihero meets along the way: the Duc d'Orleans, who wants to replace the ineffectual Lous XVI, and most fascinating of all, the mad scientist Honore Fragonard and his astonishing Cavalier of the Apocalypse. A brilliant addition, to be sure! A terrific title. A terrific novel!... And finally, I love the way the author didn't jolt our bones in a rush of hurtling carriages and fiacres in the obligatory thriller-type climax, but rather in a neat, shocking turn of events, a moment of horror, and then, sigh, the heart-piercing End. Ah-hhhh. PLEASE, please SUBMIT!
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Start with the prequel..., January 4, 2010
This review is from: The Cavalier of the Apocalypse (Hardcover)
First Sentence: Aristide Ravel stumbled upon the first fire early on All Hallows' Eve.
Aristide Revel is a penniless writer who never expects to come across the body of a man lying in the snow of a graveyard with his throat slit and the body marked with Masonic symbols. Police inspector Brasseur, Revel's former neighbor, quickly recognizes that he is not a suspect in the killing, but quickly makes Revel a subinspector to help solve the crime.
Although this is the most recent book in the series, it is a prequel to the others so it made sense to read it first.
I appreciated Alleyn's skill at providing a strong sense of place and time. She takes us from grand mansions to inside the Bastille. Set just prior to the French Revolution, it provides insight into the political unrest of the period. It was also interesting to gain a perspective as to why the French supported the Americans during our Revolution.
Alleyn's skill at creating interesting characters is just as well done. She adroitly combines the fictional with the real with interactions which made sense. I found Ravel to be a character I want to follow. His personal history places his somewhat on the outside yet his intelligence and ability to reason make him make me think of a much more dimensional Holmes-type character. I particularly appreciated the scene where he uncovers the betrayal of one he thought to be his friend. I also appreciate that Alleyn did not follow a stereotypical path when dealing with another possible relationship.
The plot was very well done with interesting and unexpected details and a very good unanticipated ending. The period of the French Revolution is one I do not usually enjoy. I can't explain why I find it unpleasant, but I usually avoid books set during that time.
Ms. Alleyn has become an exception and now has a place on my buy list. I am delighted to know I've the other two books waiting for me on my TBR shelves.
THE CAVALIER OF THE APOCALYPSE (Hist. Mys-Aristide Ravel-France-Georgian/1786) - VG
Alleyn, Susanne - 3rd in series
Minotaur Books, 2009, US Hardcover - ISBN: 9780312379889
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
"I like to think of myself as a student of mankind.", July 21, 2009
This review is from: The Cavalier of the Apocalypse (Hardcover)
Probably the most interesting character in this elaborately named novel is pre-Revolutionary Paris, unrest pervasive in a city bedeviled by poverty, the French king and his court oblivious to the complaints of the people. Aristide Ravel is not unaware of such daily battles, an aspiring man of letters in a threadbare suit. Chancing upon a number of fires set randomly throughout the city, Aristide is too concerned with daily survival to indulge his curiosity until recruited by a police inspector. When an identified body of a man is discovered in a Parisian cemetery, Ravel is approached by Inspector Brasseau. The man's throat is slit, various symbols of Freemasonry carved on his torso. Once the inspector determines Ravel is not the murderer, he cajoles Aristide with promises of remuneration, requesting his help in learning the identity of the dead man. Thus is Aristide delivered from bystander to participant in an investigation that allows him entry to a part of society usually unavailable to such a man.
With an infamous family history in his past, Ravel prefers to look to the future, surprisingly adept at police work, albeit not as a permanent avocation. Accompanying Inspector Brasseau, Aristide finds himself mixing with the families of the upper class, including a beautiful young woman who finds him agreeably attractive. Yet the underlying theme, the activities of the Freemasons is pervasive, clearly a link to the recent political unrest and the murder, especially when the body of the murdered man goes missing. In a city of extremes, where hungry citizens grumble about an indifferent monarchy and violence simmers just beneath the surface, Aristide is but a witness to great historical events, the country drifting toward revolution, Louis XVI willfully ignorant of his subjects' suffering. While scandal roils around the nobles and an outrageous affair involving a diamond necklace, Ravel concentrates on the missing corpse, the betrayal of those in his most intimate circle and a momentary flirtation with romance above his station in life.
But for all the drama of the era, Ravel's adventures are essentially low-key, the protagonist hardly a compelling character in a tale with a tenuous plot. The novel is strangely passionless for all the chaos: the involvement of Freemasons in the political arena and a murder beset with contradictions. It is though Ravel is peering through a looking glass smudged with fingerprints. This is not his world. The mannered figures of the well-to-do contrasting with the crude urgency of angry commoners, Alleyn opts for the tenor of the era, gentlemanly at all costs, the title more intriguing after all than the story. Luan Gaines/2009.
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