Displaying items by tag: Voltaire

The last thing Voltaire or Émilie du Châtelet wanted to see at Cirey in the remote Champagne countryside was a uniform—let alone that of a private in the Maréchaussée, France’s military police corps. But that’s just what Voltaire had to face one morning in 1735, after a young man was shot dead in the Cirey forest. Research at Cirey itself, in the Musée de la Gendarmerie at Melun and on sites like imagesdesoldats.fr gave me a picture of what Voltaire saw as he strode across Émilie’s courtyard to confront Cavalier Victor Constant, the military policeman who made it his duty to solve the murder. While Murder at Cirey is on preorder at Amazon, I'd like to help you see Victor ride into action.

This is how the salon at the Château de Cirey looked in 2007 when I was kindly received there by the Comtesse de Salignac-Fénelon. Not precisely as it would have appeared in 1735 while Émilie du Châtelet was sheltering Voltaire at her home in this remote corner of the Champagne—but its grandeur alone would have enough to intimidate a lower-class gendarme, if he were ordered to investigate a crime on her premises …

Cavalier Constant, mounted policeman, had to do just that in Murder at Cirey, my first novel in the new series that Sapere Books are launching this year. Here is their announcement, accompanied by two more images to introduce the character whom some readers have dubbed ‘the Jack Reacher of the eighteenth century’. Thank you, Sapere Books.