Reviews in Print:
After A Far Better Rest (2000), an homage to Dickens's A Tale of Two Cities, Alleyn returns to postrevolutionary Paris in her second novel, a taut police procedural. In the fall of 1796, police spy Aristide Ravel, who's haunted by fears that he has helped send dozens of innocent victims to the guillotine, and his employer, Commissaire Brasseur, investigate the slaying of Jean-Louis Saint-Ange, a property owner who lived on his rents, and Saint-Ange's ex-lover, Célie Montereau. Saint-Ange had apparently been extorting money from aristocratic families, and few, including his colorful porter, Grangier, mourn his demise. Despite qualms about "mistakenly being the cause of a man's death," Aristide dutifully interviews anxious former associates of Célie and her well-to-do parents in search of the truth. Full of authentic historical detail, ranging from the rise of General Bonaparte to the antics of flamboyant incroyables, the story builds to an emotionally charged climax in which Aristide reveals painful secrets from his own past.
--Publishers Weekly
The French Revolution may have resulted in liberty for some, but Alleyn's latest dispatch from Revolutionary France (A Far Better Rest, 2000) examines the lives of those left behind. Police investigator Aristide Ravel brings knowledge and sympathy to the double murder of a wealthy young woman, Celie Montereau, in the apartment of a second victim, bachelor Louis Saint-Ange, who "lived on his rents"--profits from systematic extortion. Although her father, prominent Citizen Montereau, denies it, Celie appears to have been one of his victims. Aristide questions her young brother, her elderly aunt, who refuses to call anyone "Citizen," and an unlikely friend of hers, Citizeness Rosalie Clement, a genteel and impoverished woman acquainted with disappointments far beyond naive young Celie's experience. Finding himself drawn to the candid and bitter Rosalie, Aristide discovers against his will that there's more to her life than her quiet misery at a down-at-heels boarding house. The double murder he's investigating, an apparently unrelated series of murders of fashionable men, and several unhappy love affairs, all end by coming together on the guillotine's scaffold. Alleyn simultaneously considers the destruction caused by the Revolution as well as the smaller domestic mysteries of love lost and betrayed. The result can be compelling if sometimes over-ambitious and pretentious.
--Kirkus Reviews
When two people are found murdered in post-revolutionary Paris, police agent Aristide Ravel investigates. Ravel discovers the male victim was blackmailing the other victim, a wealthy young woman named Célie. Célie’s friend, Rosalie, insists that the young woman’s fiancé had to have committed the murders in a crime of passion. Aubry had apparently uncovered Célie’s seduction and pregnancy by the blackmailer and has no alibi for the night of the murders. Ravel is attracted to the enigmatic Rosalie, but the more he delves into the crime, he thinks Rosalie knows far more than she’s telling and may be somehow involved. In the gritty back-streets of Paris, Ravel struggles to find the truth and save Rosalie from the growing threat of the guillotine.
The Paris of 1796 comes alive in Alleyn’s fast-paced novel. Readers will be surprised by the ending, with its twisted scenario of rape and revenge.
--Diane Scott Lewis, The Historical Novels Review
ALLEYN’S NOVEL, GAME OF PATIENCE, A WINNER
Susanne Alleyn has written a historical mystery novel titled Game of Patience, published by Thomas Dunne Books, which is indeed a winner.
To take the measure of Alleyn’s writing, one would have to go past today’s fine mystery writers and reach back to three great whodunit writers of the first half of the 20th century--Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, G.K. Chesterton and Agatha Christie.
The novel is riveting along its circuitous route and startling denouement. It goes forward, backward, sideward and nearly upside down in its intense cliffhanger brilliance. It reminds in a way of Rameau’s Tragedie Lyrique “Les Boréades” of 1764 in its vivid expression and variety of flow. It is a work that one would almost feel compelled to read in one sitting, the reader unable to resist the mystery puzzle Alleyn creates.
Alleyn brings knowing historical detail in the post-revolutionary Paris setting. At one point, the spill of a chamber pot thrown from an upper window just grazes one of the characters rather humorously. Mozart in 1778 remarked that “Paris is one great pig sty, one has to walk the streets with a perfumed handkerchief and watch out for what may come down from above.” So some things in Paris in the 18th century prevailed during the monarchy, the Terror and the post-revolutionary period.
The characterization in the novel is superb. Aristide Ravel, the undercover police agent, entirely a creation of Alleyn, is the kind of charismatic, intensely human detective that is central to all good mystery writing. So good indeed, that one wishes for a series of Ravel novels from Alleyn’s pen. The executioner, Henri Sanson, drawn from life, is a tragic figure, and Rosalie Clément, another real life character, was the most complex creation in this thriller.
There is a rich theatricality in Alleyn’s writing. Although she could not capture the art or music that abounded in her chosen period, the book surely lends itself to being a stunning TV dramatization or, better still, a movie. Then the glory of music and art in Paris of the period and the great architecture of the “City of Light” would wrap this marvelous book splendidly and the entire work would become a cinematic coup du theatre.
--John Paul Keeler, Register Star/
Alleyn brought revolutionary-era France to life vividly in her debut novel, A Far Better Rest (2000), a reimagining of Dickens' A Tale of Two Cities, and she revisits the era in this mystery. Aristide Ravel, an associate of the police force, is called in when Louis Saint-Ange, a man of means but questionable repute, is found murdered alongside a young woman. At first Ravel and his associate, Commissaire Brasseur, focus on Saint-Ange, a blackmailer with dirt on many upper-class denizens, but when they identify the girl as Celie Montereau, a young woman from a wealthy family, they begin to dig into the girl's past only to discover she bore an illegitimate child and had a clandestine lover. Ravel and Brasseur track the young man, but even as the evidence mounts against him, Ravel fears he might be innocent and loathes the idea of convicting an innocent man in an climate that has already seen so much bloodshed. Grounded by a complex, haunted hero, the suspense in this layered mystery builds slowly but reaches a breakneck speed.
--Booklist
It is 1796 in a Paris trying to regain some semblance of order after the Reign of Terror (1793-94). Aristide Ravel investigates major crimes for his friend Police Commissaire Brasseur. Already doubting the justice system that is in place, Ravel must delve into the double murders of a young girl from a wealthy family and a man blackmailing her. The story plays out like the card game of patience with Ravel finding one way to sort out the facts of the case and then shuffling them in another way to reach an entirely different conclusion. This is a true puzzle mystery, with the detective reexamining the facts several times until the solution is found. Alleyn knows her French Revolution, creates a complex brain-teaser of a mystery, and excels in making her characters believable. In short, this book has everything; recommended.
--Library Journal
Blurbs:
"Susanne Alleyn's Game of Patience is a well-crafted historical mystery, authentic in every detail. Wonderfully entertaining."
--Sandra Gulland, author, The Many Lives and Secret Sorrows of Josephine B.
"An engrossing, richly detailed whodunit set in edgy, post-revolutionary Paris . . . I was riveted."
--Karen Harper, author, The Fatal Fashione and The Last Boleyn
"Post-revolutionary Paris is the setting for this sophisticated and stylish novel, a true mystery, penned by American author Susanne Alleyn, who creates the atmosphere of those pre-Napoleonic days that challenges the skills of Caleb Carr of The Alienist fame."
--Big Sleep Books
"This book satisfies on many levels."
--The Poisoned Pen Bookstore (April 2006 History/