UBC: Levingston, Little Demon in the City of Light

[truepenny]

Little Demon in the City of Light: A True Story of Murder and Mesmerism in Belle Epoque Paris by Steven Levingston

My rating: 4 of 5 stars



This is engaging, well-written, certainly entertaining as only belle epoque Paris can be. It features some of the same people as The Killer of Little Shepherds: A True Crime Story and the Birth of Forensic Science, since one of the centerpieces of this story is a remarkable piece of forensic detective work. It never really answers its own questions, which bugged me a little--no discussion of modern understandings of what hypnotism can and can't do and how Gabrielle Bompard's story stacks up, and so no need to come down off the fence about whether she was as under Eyraud's thumb as she said she was or whether--as he maintained--she was the one controlling him.

Levingston occasionally has the lightning-bug problem--e.g., in describing what Emile Zola thought of women, he uses the word "distrustful" instead of the word he means (as is abundantly clear from context, even if I didn't know enough about Zola's misogyny to tell), which is "untrustworthy." But he uses primary sources--one of the French detectives kept a diary, which is worth its weight in gold--and he tells his story with flair.



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