For some readers, the last time they heard the name Baudelaire may have been when Lemony Snicket created his amazing Baudelaire orphans and the series of unfortunate events that plagued them. For poetry lovers, the name has different--but still dark--connotations: the flowers of death and brooding poems of French writer Charles Baudelaire. For Belgian novelist Bob Van Laerhoven, the poet's work and life provide a rich, atmospheric background for Baudelaire's Revenge--his first novel to be translated into English from his native Flemish, and winner of the Hercule Poirot Prize for Best Crime Fiction (2007).
It's 1870. The Franco-Prussian War (which France will eventually lose) has just broken out and Paris is in chaos. Middle-aged police inspector Paul Lefèvre, on his way to visit one of his favorite cocottes, hears a scream coming from a brothel. There he finds the body of a man with an unusual tattoo. Near the dead man is a sheet of paper with handwritten lines by Lefèvre's favorite poet, Charles Baudelaire--who himself died three years prior. Having once attended a reading by the "deathly pale poet," who signed a book for the detective, Lefèvre recognizes the handwriting as Baudelaire's own. The brothel's female concierge tells Lefèvre an "extremely beautiful" hooded Ursuline nun, with the face of a "porcelain doll," had visited earlier to pray for the souls of the women. The game is afoot.
A second man, decapitated, is found in a catacomb. He was a writer. The body was luridly, horrifically augmented after death to give it a female physical appearance. Another piece of paper with Baudelaire's verse is found nearby, in the "handwriting of a dead man"--Baudelaire again. When a third victim is found dead on Baudelaire's grave, Lefèvre has no choice but to believe the killer has a personal motive. It seems impossible, but could it be that the dead poet is seeking revenge?
Letters and journal entries inserted in the narrative help gradually fill in the gaps as Lefèvre closes in on the killer. Although rather lurid and a bit hard to stomach in places, this gritty, detail-rich historical mystery novel involves the reader in a subtle narrative web. Van Laerhoven weaves in some of this historical period's favorite supernatural elements--magic, exotic poisons, séances and ghosts--to create an eerie, fin-de-siècle atmosphere worthy of Poe, Joris-Karl Huysmans and other "decadent" writers of that era. --Tom Lavoie
Shelf Talker: This complex mystery from an award-winning Belgian author joins history and literary history to create a sly, smart revenge tale.