Displaying items by tag: Turgot map

The hero of the Victor Constant Investigations is a mounted military policeman and in my latest title, which I have just delivered to Sapere Books, he rides from his headquarters in the remote Champagne province to his home quarter in Paris, Saint-Jacques de la Boucherie. There he reports to the Chief of Police at the massive fortress, the Grand Châtelet, which houses seven law courts, a full company of civil police, the morgue for people found drowned in the Seine or dead in the streets, and a massive prison second only to the Bastille.

No one who writes about France in the 18th century has any excuse for getting the geography of their characters' journeys wrong! The maps of the time are incomparable. The section you see here of the famous Turgot map of Paris shows the Grand Châtelet as it stood in the year when Victor reported there, 1737. It's just above the bottom right-hand corner, the big complex with the tall towers that have conical roofs. He accessed it by riding to the right bank of the Seine over the Pont du Change, depicted nearby. The Grand Châtelet stood until the first decade of the 19th century.

Victor's first investigation, which takes place in the remote Champagne, is Murder at Cirey, now available on preorder from Amazon.