Customer Reviews

For the King

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I enjoyed trying to piece together
all the clues provided. No cheating here.
I did feel a connection with the fictional
hero as he was on a time limited investigation
to find the real perpetrator/s of the terrorist
attack on Napoleon or an innocent man would face
dire consequences.
I enjoyed seeing the change in her hero, the
fictional police chief inspector Roch Miquel
as he is also stymied in his work by coworkers who
do not like him and a boss who manipulates him.
He learns from his experiences.
There is also dramatic foreshadowing for what is
to come for France under Napoleon.
But it is as a thriller that it is most satisfying.

Until next time Ms. Delors,
Well Done!

Terrorists detonate a bomb in an effort to assassinate their country's leader. Although they fail in their goal, nevertheless there is widespread damage and many are killed or injured. Although the reader knows from the first who the culprits are, the hero - a detective in the city's police force who has worked his way up the ranks to become a Chief - does not know, and we watch as he methodically conducts his investigation to identify and apprehend the guilty.

Added to the mix is his affair with a beautiful married woman, whom he loves but whom he increasingly distrusts. Then there is the political infighting amongst the police forces, with everyone jockeying for position and power. The hero, whose enemies are many and whose friends are few, struggles just to hold on to the position he has worked hard for, and for which his beloved father sacrificed much hard work and money to help his son succeed. The hero's position becomes even more tenuous when his father is arrested on the flimsiest of charges that he is connected to a group seeking to overthrow their national leader, and the hero's superior - who feels no love for him - gives him exactly one month to apprehend the culprits or his father will face deportation.

Sound like a detective story set in modern-day NYC? Well, the detective's name is not O'Grady or Diamante and the story is not set in NYC. His name is Roch Miquel, he lives in Paris in 1800, and the national leader under attack is not a US President, but Napoleon Bonaparte.

For the King tells the story of a true but little-known (at least to Americans) incident in the early months of Napoleon's reign, when France was still seeking stability and equilibrium after the excesses of the Revolution, and when Paris was hotly divided between those who supported the powers of the Revolution, those who wanted a restoration of the monarchy, and those who felt Napoleon was the answer. Catherine Delors' familiarity with the culture and history of France comes through in the novel, as she creates a strong sense of the time and place. Although her often terse, clipped language and emotionally subdued style evokes the feel of modern detective fiction, the story is very firmly grounded in Paris in 1800.

The cover, beautiful as it is, does not accurately portray what this novel is really about. Those who pick up this book thinking it might be about a royal romance will be disappointed; although there is an element of romance in the story, it is restrained and just one element among many. On the other hand, men may hesitate to pick up this book because of the cover - thinking it is a royal romance - and that is a shame because the storyline, combined with Delors' frank and unsentimental style, would appeal to men every bit as much as women.

The suspense, action, and romance in For the King are mild; its major strength lies in its ability to transport the reader to a specific time and place, illuminating the seething cauldron that was Paris in the early days of Napoleon's reign. If, like me, you have only minimal knowledge of the French Revolution and its aftermath you will still have no problem following the narrative; Delors subtly incorporates explanations of the various administrative factions that governed Paris at that time, and she seamlessly weaves historic and imagined characters together in a way that is completely believable.

There are few things I enjoy more than getting lost in a really good book. For those who enjoy such pursuits, a book I cannot recommend highly enough for getting lost in is Catherine Delors' new novel FOR THE KING. A soul-stirring epic, replete with authentic detail, FOR THE KING sets a new standard of excellence for historical fiction. Madame Delors has raised the bar. The flow of vivid descriptions and lively characterizations seamlessly spring forth. Opening with an act of terrorism that resembles the atrocities of our own time, the novel inspires horror without indulging in the grotesque. Similarly, the intimate encounter between the hero and his lady is intensely passionate without being voyeuristic. The writing combines power with beauty and realism with genuine pathos in order to capture the essence of an era of upheaval.

To quote from the book's website:

"The Reign of Terror has ended six years earlier, and Napoléon Bonaparte has seized power, but shifting political loyalties still tear apart families and lovers. On Christmas Eve 1800, a bomb explores along Bonaparte's route, narrowly missing him but striking dozens of bystanders. Chief Inspector Roch Miquel, a young policeman with a bright future and a beautiful mistress, must arrest the assassins before they attack again. Complicating Miquel's investigation are the maneuverings of his superior, the redoubtable Fouché, the indiscretions of his own father, a former Jacobin, and two intriguing women. For The King takes readers through the dark alleys and glittering salons of post-revolutionary Paris. It is a romantic thriller, a tale of love, betrayal and redemption."

Caught in a searing love affair with a lady who has much to hide, Roch Miquel has to learn the difference between love which endures and love which is mere escapism. As the reader accompanies Roch through the streets of post-Revolutionary Paris, with its colorful mix of sights and smells, both delicious and repulsive and everything in between, the city gradually surrenders its secrets. For as Roch seeks to unravel the plot to assassinate Napoleon, the mystery of his own life is slowly revealed. Roch is an appealing character, with a sense of honor and duty that come from his peasant Auvergnat upbringing, as well as the shrewdness to see behind the many façades of his world. Nevertheless, much remains hidden to him, such as the identity of the royalist agent with the code name of "For the King."

One of the most striking aspects of the book is the study of how devout, conservative people too often prove to be their own worst enemies. By descending to terrorism in order to murder Napoleon, the royalists not only destroy lives but bring shame upon their cause. While the royalist cause is not unsympathetic to me (I write all about it in Madame Royale) it is easy to become disgusted with the royalist plotters, who demonstrate yet another example of Catholics Behaving Badly. Redemption, however, is offered to all who open their hearts to truth and to personal conversion, one among many subtle threads in Madame Delors' political thriller.

In 1800 a bomb explodes on the road Napoleon travels. He survives the attempt, but the assassins kill dozens of bystanders. Police Chief Inspector Roch Miquel investigates the assassination attempt and the homicides, in which the culprits had no regard for the innocents.

His inquiry is hampered by his corrupt uncooperative peers. Even more of a handicap is his superior the Minister of Police Fouche, who incarcerates Roch's father on a phony charge to control his independent minded chief inspector. Feeling beleaguered and handcuffed with every step he takes, Roch turns to his married mistress Blanche Coudert for solace, but she conceals something that if it became public could leave the cop sharing a cell with his dad; that is if they are not deported or beheaded.

This is an excellent Napoleon Era French police procedural starring a dedicated chief inspector who feels frustrated with every inquiry he makes. The investigation is cleverly designed so that for every clue he follows someone interferes. With a sense of time and place to anchor the superb story line, readers who enjoy a strong historical whodunit will want to follow Roch's efforts to solve the mass murder assassination attempt.

Harriet Klausner

In contrast to her first novel, Mistress of the Revolution, Catherine Dolors' For the King does not begin with years steeping of her fictional protagonist in earth, flesh and stone of Auvergne, before she encounters the political stark reality of fortifications being erected around Paris to prevent the entry of untaxed food for its inhabitants, but rather, warmly around the hearth of a Parisian tavern, to be shattered in an instant by the act of terror around which Bonaparte instantly consolidated his power as First Counsel. And it is the dictates of political imperatives that compel the speed of the plot through the work.

We are at once borne into an elaborately detailed world we assumed we knew of, but knew not. It is the world of Joseph Fouché, a one-time novitiate who became in the Revolution a revolutionary republican, ransacker of churches and royal tombs (along with Jacques Hébert and Pierre Gaspard Chaumette, one of establishers of the culte de la Raison, otherwise known as the Cult of the Goddess of Reason), and suppressor of revolts outside and against Paris, as to earn him the title "The Executioner of Lyons," executing over 1,900 ("Terror, salutary terror, is now the order of the day here. . . .We are causing much impure blood to flow, but it is our duty to do so, it is for humanity's sake . . ."), ultimately conflicting with Robespierre and then leading the successful coup against the Jacobins as he was about to fall to the Great Terror of 1794. The ultimate political survivor, we meet this historic master of political intrigue at the close of 1800, where he is now minister of police at Paris, a position he retained after supporting the coup that brought Napoleon to power a year earlier.

Fouché is mentor to Delors' central character, at first an almost too young, handsome and rising Chief Inspector of Police, Roch Miquel. He is also born of the soil of Auvergne, but unlike the provincial nobles in her first novel, Roch is of thoroughly humble circumstances, rising only through merit in the new republic, until as the story unfolds he is comfortably ensconced in a his position and a relationship with a wealthy and beautiful married woman, when he is thrust into the investigation into the Christmas Eve bombing of the Rue Saint-Nicaise, from which Napoleon escaped but many innocent Parisians were killed or wounded. And it is soon Fouché's charge to Roch, that he apprehend the perpetrators - whom Fouché knows to be Royalists - or see his father, an unreconstructed Jacobin tavern keeper - join the other 130 freshly rounded up Jacobins whom history records as having been "deported" by Napoleon as a matter of "public safety," most never to have been seen again.

The historical and complex bombers are beautifully interwoven throughout, along with a remarkable amount of known detail of their lives. Dolors does an outstanding job of animating her background and you take it all in without at first realizing how much painstakingly assembled history you have consumed. The lives of a numerous seemingly obscure historical figures, amidst a handful of fictional characters, each of whom plays their hand to a dénouement in which only a few survive.

And again in contrast to Mistress of the Revolution, where the walls around Paris become a crushing force from which there little hope of escape, here they are sufficiently porous, that in the flux of the characters, compelled by every drive of Man and forever shifting position with one and other, the city itself is alive. And Roch reaches unexpected maturity within it.

I stayed up until about 3am to finish this book because I was dying to find out how things concluded. Delors has written my favorite kind of historical: rich in detail with interesting characters and a detailed plot that is engrossing. I particularly loved the police procedural angle -- I adore all things Napoleonic, but haven't read a novel that was really set with the citizens. Our hero, Roch Miquel, is maddening and dreamy, which felt very real for me: his youth and experience helped and hindered him through his investigation.

It is Christmas Eve, the year 1800, in post-revolutionary France. Paris' unsuspecting citizens go about their business casually, unaware of conspirators plotting against the First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte. When a crude but powerful bomb rips through the streets, Citizen Inspector Miquel searches for the assassins, knowing that they will never stop the vicious quest for France's return to its monarchical past.

The French republic bolstered by its revolutionary ideals permitted Miquel's meteoric rise from humble beginnings. Now, his father's rhetoric against Napoleon's corrupt government lands him in jail. Miquel suddenly discovers his father's fate is contingent on his innate skills and speed. He races against time to discover the truth. Ties to the present also hinder his abilities, with his beautiful mistress Blanche Coudert as a persistent distraction. I never doubted that he would expose the assassins and capture the elusive conspirator, code-named For the King. His deft handling of each new obstacle always gave me with intense relief, only to have my heart full of fear whenever an unforeseen threat immediately arose.

Catherine Delors first wowed me with her portrayal of revolutionary France in her debut title, Mistress of the Revolution. I have come to admire her most for her passion for France of the 18th and 19th centuries. It is always evident in the history she reveals, and the mannerisms and attitudes of her characters, details that only a dedicated writer who has immersed herself in the period can bring to life. She has also impressed me with the multifaceted personalities of the individuals on the page, each unique and memorable. Miquel has high ideals, but he can be brutally purposeful when the excesses of the past threaten to misdirect his moral compass. His father has a hard edge to him, but he is invariably committed to his friends and proud of his son's accomplishments. Blanche proved the biggest surprise, more than just a pretty face in silken dresses. If you want principled but conflicted heroes, passionate and determined heroines, and cold-blooded, tireless villains, read For the King. Perhaps you will find yourself, like I was, transported to a turbulent time, rife with political upheaval and intrigue. Very few authors have that effect on me, but Catherine accomplishes it with unerring talent and tireless dedication to illuminating the past.

This dense historical fiction is laced with suspense. It tells about a Chief Inspector Roch who delves into the mystery of who tried to assassinate Napoleon during the Christmas season of 1800 in Paris. Did the Royalists or the Jacobins or someone else hatch the plot? This story combines fascinating fiction, some romance and a bit too much detail for fully pleasurable reading to give a realistic feel for the tumult of the time when Napoleon was on course to make himself an Emperor of France.

On Christmas Eve 1800, a devastating explosion by "machine infernale" on rue Saint-Nicaise in Paris kills twenty-two citizens, wounds fifty-six others and destroys dozens of surrounding buildings. Napoleon Bonaparte the newly self-appointed First Consul of France continues by carriage on his route to an evening at the Opera unharmed. This failed assassinated attempt angers many people, but who is responsible?

Napoleon has numerous enemies including his own countrymen. Could it be the Jacobin forces responsible for the French Revolution nine years prior who want their overthrown constitutional government reinstated, or the Chouans, loyal to the Catholic monarchy intent on the restoration of a deposed King? Napoleon is convinced that the Jacobins are to blame and immediately orders the arrest over a hundred known insurgents. The powerful Minister of Police Joseph Fouché is determined to prove to Napoleon that the Royalist's are at fault requesting Chief Inspector Roch Miguel to investigate two known Chouans, Pierre de Saint-Régent and Francois Carbon. To cover his bet the Minister has also offered a reward of 2,000 gold louis for any information leading to the arrest and conviction of the Jacobins who "committed the atrocity."

Suspicious of Fouché's speed in delivering these two names, Miguel begins the investigation into the assassins of the rue Saint-Nicaise from evidence and eye witness accounts. Miguel's superior Prefect of Police Louis-Nicolas Dubois influenced by his boss Fouché also believes the Jacobins are to blame. From the description of the suspects Miguel is not convinced the assassins are any known Jacobins. His boss points out the similarity to the "Conspiracy of Daggers" assassination plot by the Jacobins against Napoleon only two months prior. Miguel suggests they do not know enough yet and should not ignore clues that would lead to the Chouans. Dubois accuses Miguel of favoritism to the Jacobins because of his father's allegiance and blames him for not knowing of the assassination plot and preventing it. When Miguel's aged father Old Miguel is arrested as a suspect, Dubois gives Roch one month to prove that the Royalists indeed are behind the plot or his father will be deported as a traitor. Interestingly, the two suspects supplied by Minister of Police Joseph Fouché are quickly linked to the crime, but failing to find the elusive third man with gold spectacles may be Roch's undoing and his father's eminent death.

Based on the "Plot of the Rue Saint-Nicaise" author Catherine Delors has crafted a thriller from historical fact; - a police procedural in its infancy. Meticulously researched at the archives of the Ministry and Prefecture of Police in Pairs, the events surrounding the bombing and the eventual investigation give the reader an inside view of the political atmosphere of post-Revolutionary France and Napoleon's struggle to rule a country manipulated away from the new Republic and the old Royalty.

Psychologically, the conspiracy is viewed from the perspective of the two main male characters, young, honorable Chief Inspector Rouch Miguel and the revengeful mastermind behind the plot Joseph de Limoëlan. Each represent opposite sides of the struggle: Limoëlan a former aristocrat who watched his family guillotined and his property confiscated by the Republic and Miguel, a Jacobin peasant and citizen of the street who rose socially by education and hard work. Both working for their own France. Napoleon on the other hand is working for his own corrupt vision France.

Steeped in incredible detail, I recommend FOR THE KING to readers who love to be engulfed in an era and swept away in suspense and intrigue. Since we know the perpetrators of the plot from the beginning, this is not a mystery, but it plays out like one as the main character CI Roch Miguel must solve the crime to save his father and the Jacobin dignity. Those who like a good thriller will be pleased with the plot twists, double dealings and political machinations, however, those looking for emotional depth will be unmoved and short sheeted on the romance.

Laurel Ann, Austenprose

On Christmas Eve in 1800, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte is on his way to the Opera when a bomb explodes on Rue Saint-Nicaise, narrowly missing Bonaparte and maiming or killing dozens of bystanders. Chief Roch Miguel has been given the task of apprehending the assassins in a city of millions, many of whom support King Louis XVIII and will do anything to overthrow Bonaparte.

The line between friend and foe is soon blurred, and Miguel is forced to trust those who most likely will betray him. Will he catch those responsible for the Rue Saint-Nicaise atrocity before the tumultuous situation in postrevolutionary Paris becomes more personal?

Bravo to Delors for following up the smashing success of Mistress of the Revolution with an equally wonderful new novel. Rich in detail, eloquently written, she pulls the reader into Napoleonic Paris with an intriguing tale based upon actual events. Blending historical and fictional characters into a thrilling investigation where revenge and betrayal play major roles, the reader follows Miguel as he seeks to uncover the hiding places of the assassins, despite the numerous obstacles placed in his way.

Character driven historical novels don't get any better than For the King by Catherine Delors. Masterful storytelling set amid the backdrop of political turmoil makes this an excellent novel. I highly recommend For the King and eagerly await this author's next book.