In Blood Royal, Eric Jager returns to the world of medieval true crime that he popularized in The Last Duel.
On a cold November night in 1407, a band of masked men assassinated Louis I of Orléans, the powerful and unpopular brother of the intermittently insane King Charles, on a dark street in Paris. Jager tells the stories of both the criminal investigation that followed and the subsequent impact of the assassination on French politics.
The first half of Blood Royal is presented as a medieval murder mystery, based on working notes of the investigation written by Guillaume de Tignonville, the provost of Paris responsible for finding the duke's killers. Except for the absence of modern forensic science, Tigonville's investigation techniques will be familiar to any fan of police procedurals, from interviewing witnesses to tracing physical clues. Jager maintains a high level of suspense throughout the inquiry as Tigonville and his men eliminate suspect after suspect until they uncover the shocking solution.
The second half of Blood Royal, equally interesting, is more traditional history. Jager examines the power vacuum in the royal family left by Orléans' death, the civil war that followed and Henry V's opportunistic invasion of France. He ends with the rise of Joan of Arc on the horizon.
Blood Royal will appeal to history buffs, true crime fans and anyone who loves historical mysteries or police procedurals. --Pamela Toler, blogging at History in the Margins