Paris Requiem - Couverture souple

Paris 1899. The city is a glittering hub of fin-desiecle activity. Theatres and galleries are vibrant with artistic energy. The new metro is under construction, and so is the site for the centennial Universal Exhibition. But there is also violent political upheaval. The Dreyfus Affair has released a riotous surge of anti-semitism. Asylums and jails are overcrowded. Death and madness hover like a cloud over the city. Bostanian lawyer James Norton has been sent by his mother to bring back his Invalid sister Ellie and his younger brother Raf, a Journalist. But the violent deaths of the actress Olympe Fabre and then of her sister judith in the asylum of Salpetriere, draw the siblings into a dark web of violence. Olympe is pregnant. Is her death a crime passionnel or part of a conspiracy of serial killings of Jewish women, disturbingly linked to medical research at Salpetriere? A gripping psychological period thriller.

Lisa Appignanesi OBE is a prize-winning writer, novelist, broadcaster and cultural commentator. She is past president of English PEN, served as deputy director of the Institute of Contemporary Arts and is chair of the Freud Museum. She appears regularly on R3's Night Waves and R4's Saturday Review. Her many books include The Memory Man (Arcadia, 2004). She lives in North London.