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A review by cemoses
Blood Royal: A True Tale of Crime and Detection in Medieval Paris by Eric Jager
3.0
The book is not bad; it is just terribly miscast as an historical detective story rather than a story about a political assassination and its consequences.
For me the book did not work as a mystery-and I like historical mystery and crime both true and fiction. The author did not persuade me that Guillaume de Tignonville who is the "detective" in this book did anything unique for his era in trying to pursue the people who committed the assassination. For it to be a true crime book I would have wanted more information on how murder was handled in that time period and what Guillaume de Tignonville did that was different. Also I felt I did not get sufficient information on the crimes of the two people who claimed they were clerics whom Guillaume de Tignonville executed (a previous set of crimes in which the book's "detective" handled). In addition, I did not like the fact that in the book first Mr. Jager describes the crime and who saw the crime and then writes about the depositions of the people who saw the crime occur. It is repetitive. How the crime happened and the witnesses to the crime saw should be written about only once.
However, I did like a lot of the history in the book. I think the book better would have been described as "Assassination and its Effects". The book had good descriptions of Paris; at times I felt I was there. I was intrigued that the French nobles let a King whom everyone seemed to think was insane for much of the time rule France. Much of the history both the civil war in France and the wars between the French and English was interesting.
In short I thought the book did provider some interesting history but it was not good as a mystery or detective story.
For me the book did not work as a mystery-and I like historical mystery and crime both true and fiction. The author did not persuade me that Guillaume de Tignonville who is the "detective" in this book did anything unique for his era in trying to pursue the people who committed the assassination. For it to be a true crime book I would have wanted more information on how murder was handled in that time period and what Guillaume de Tignonville did that was different. Also I felt I did not get sufficient information on the crimes of the two people who claimed they were clerics whom Guillaume de Tignonville executed (a previous set of crimes in which the book's "detective" handled). In addition, I did not like the fact that in the book first Mr. Jager describes the crime and who saw the crime and then writes about the depositions of the people who saw the crime occur. It is repetitive. How the crime happened and the witnesses to the crime saw should be written about only once.
However, I did like a lot of the history in the book. I think the book better would have been described as "Assassination and its Effects". The book had good descriptions of Paris; at times I felt I was there. I was intrigued that the French nobles let a King whom everyone seemed to think was insane for much of the time rule France. Much of the history both the civil war in France and the wars between the French and English was interesting.
In short I thought the book did provider some interesting history but it was not good as a mystery or detective story.