Displaying items by tag: Sapere Books

On my Facebook and Instagram pages I'm continuing an interview conducted by author Helen Hollick with the hero of Murder at Cirey, mounted gendarme Victor Constant. In the spring of 1735 he was banished by the military police, the Maréchaussée, from Paris to a remote area in the Haute Marne, and then in the first week of summer he was faced with a murder case that because of a dangerous dissension with his superior officers he was forced to solve on his own. 

Here is the latest interview question from Helen Hollick. The illustration is of course a portrait of the redoubtable physicist and mathematician, Madame du Châtelet. Murder at Cirey is currently on pre-order on Amazon.

 HH: Tell me about one or two of the other characters who feature with you in your story. Who are some of the nice characters and who is the nastiest one?

I’ll start with the nastiest one, who is of course the murderer. He is just the kind of man (he would call himself a gentleman, but he doesn’t deserve the title) whom one meets in the top echelons of provincial society, and who takes advantage of his position to feather his own nest and treat everyone with contempt. This one is also intelligent enough to be a cunning conspirator, and ruthless enough to frame his associates for his own crimes. I finally got the measure of him—but I was nearly too late! At the opposite end of the aristocratic spectrum is Mme du Châtelet. But I wouldn’t describe her as ‘nice’, exactly. ‘Spectacular’ is perhaps the word. Here is the impression she made on me when she kindly offered advice on my detective work:

‘Victor took the cue and rose to his feet. He would have preferred to stay and continue the conversation that Madame du Châtelet had carried on with such verve and grace. Her presence and her musical voice animated the room, influencing the currents of feeling and thought in startling ways. Her figure was perfect. Her face, with its well-defined features and glowing eyes, had great powers of expression and she was dressed with a flair that set off her distinctive beauty. But it was not just her person that dazzled him, it was her sheer vitality.’

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.

Victor Constant is a military policeman, the hero of a series of investigations carried out in the 1730s in the remote Champagne region of France. The first novel, Murder at Cirey, is on preorder on Amazon, from Sapere Books UK. Sapere have just sent me the first cover rough for the fourth novel in the series, Death in an Ideal Landscape, which I have just completed.Sapere's cover is in the style of Murder at Cirey (see in the blog below) and features a map from the same period by the redoubtable Cassini family.

I enjoy researching the real history and locations behind Victor's adventures and very pleased to tell you that in the latest book he has to chase a criminal all the way to Paris. There he checks out the horse markets on the south bank of the Seine, the biggest in France, which happen to be named for Saint Victor, like the nearby abbey. The map of the district shown above is by Félibien, 1734.

Sapere Books UK are releasing the Victor Constant Investigations series in June this year and the first title is on preorder at Amazon here. I am delivering the fourth in the series to Sapere this month. During an intimate conversation in that novel, a passionate young artist confesses that amongst the art works in Rome she can think of only one likeness of Victor's mouth, in a representation of the Emperor Lucius Verus. The head shown here is held in the Bardo Museum in Turin. I agree with her but only the upper lip is accurate, and to see the rest of the face you'd need to read the novel, which will also be out this year.

Back on the Central Coast I have no special news to impart--except that the new Victor Constant Mystery, Death in an Ideal Landscape, runs in lively fashion through my head when I'm walking on the beach. Not bad exercise for a winter's day! The novel is contracted to Sapere Books for 2026.

We're on the eve of an election in Australia, so many of us have been thinking deeply about our political institutions. Fortunately I don't see them as under threat, but it occurs to me that many of my historical novels depict characters required to make significant choices in times of upheaval. Rebel is a case in point. 

Somehow when I completed it in the late 1990s I was not aware how sincere a tribute it is to the Americans of every degree who fought for their great Republic. I remained fired by admiration even when my first American agent, the cultured and intellectual Alfred Hart of the Fox Chase Agency, warned me wryly that readers in the US might be more ready to remember the Civil War than their hard-won War of Independence. In Rebel I persisted in portraying leaders like George Washington and Benjamin Franklin as heroes, however, and they were seen as such by the brave protagonist in the novel, Viviane de Chercy.

In this extract from Rebel an unprincipled and indolent libertine, the Baron de Ronseul, alone at night with Viviane, favourably compares France’s absolute monarchy with the fledgling republic across the Atlantic.

‘I abominate the form of government the Americans are trying to found. Let me elaborate. In France, in all the countries of Europe, government is undertaken by gentlemen who are bred precisely to do that—to rule. Tradition and our systems ensure that the able members of the great families rise to power—prompted by their education, their upbringing and their sense of duty. Rogues and idlers like myself, meanwhile, attend to their own affairs and are overlooked or discouraged from any interference in the way the country is run.’

He reached out to pour more wine into his class and Viviane was so taken aback at hearing such a speech from him that she held her tongue.

‘In America they’re bent on destroying the traditions they inherited from the English monarchy. In future they will have no provision of talented men brought up to exercise government. All a man will need to give him a place in power is a large enough parcel of votes from an ignorant and capricious populace. In America, mademoiselle, it’s the rogues and idlers from the lower ranks who will rise up from the mire in which they are bred—and they’ll reign supreme, for there’ll be nothing to stand in their way. The consequences for that misguided country don’t bear thinking of.’

She could not hold back any longer. ‘I entirely disagree. America is led today by men of courage and principle.’

‘Perhaps. Not for long. As soon as their ill-judged systems are in place, the downhill slide into mediocrity and ruin will begin.’

‘Even now they’re planning for their future. It will be founded on example and education.’

‘Which they won’t achieve.’

‘The finest example is already there: in men like Washington, Doctor Franklin.’

He sneered as she named Franklin, but said, ‘Washington serves his country as a war leader and the old man as a diplomat. America will be soon be borne on weaker shoulders.’

‘You grossly underrate what is happening across the Atlantic.’

‘And you, mademoiselle, despite your first-hand experience, see it through rose-tinted glass.’ Then he shrugged and said quietly, ‘I’m afraid all we can do is agree to differ, on this as on everything else.’

For readers keen to know how Viviane fared in this risky confrontation, I’m delighted to say that Rebel will be republished by Sapere Books in 2025-26.

Today, the cynical assessment of the USA that I put years ago into the Baron de Ronseul’s mouth may seem uncannily accurate, but I know that the heart and soul of America defies it. The true spirit of the Republic lives in the citizens of the USA and these despotic times under the self-assumed autocracy of Donald Trump will pass, to reveal that well-founded integrity all over again.

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.

For the last year I've devoted much time and travel to finding an Executive Producer for the opera with Nicholas Gentile--see the cover of our Pitch Deck above--and securing a future for my historical novels.

I'm delighted to say I've just signed up with Sapere Books, who will be releasing ALL my previously published novels plus TWO NEW historical crime titles this year and in 2026.

I will post the dates as soon as I know them. in the meantime, I rejoice that eBooks and paperbacks of my books are returning to the marketplace.

As it happens, Émilie du Chatelet plays the role of consultant detective in my three crime novels featuring the tenacious mounted gendarme, Victor Constant. You can see a portion of one of her famous portraits in the image above. I found it amusing when an Amazon reviewer once lamented Émilie's dominance over a ballistics discussion in Murder at Cirey--he was expecting Voltaire to be the most useful thinker on the spot. Of course, now we know that Émilie's mind was far more scientific than Voltaire's ...

I so look forward to extending Victor's investigations under the Sapere Books imprint.