Why am I passionate about this?
I was an English major in college. In pursuing my love of books and language, I fell into a love of history. The passion for history began with author biographies as I tried to understand how the culture affected various authors’ writings. This is why my history strength resides in European history, because most of my favorite authors come from Europe. The more I read of the biographies, I often came across historical events I wasn’t knowledgeable about and so fell down a rabbit hole of historical research. The more I learn, the more I love history!
Michelle's book list on traveling back in time
Why did Michelle love this book?
I grabbed this historical true crime nonfiction book in order to conduct research for one of my own projects.
This book is about the rampant crime in 1600s Paris and, by extension, the Affair of the Poisons and Louis, The Sun King’s, solution. The king’s solution was to hire a police chief, La Reynie, to bring peace to the city streets. La Reynie ordered candles put in every window in the belief that the light would deter the criminal element, thus creating the City of Lights.
La Reynie was also the central investigator in the Affair of the Poisons and responsible for arresting the key figures in the crimes. Tucker also shows in this fascinating book how many of these criminal incidents were related to witchcraft and black magic.
The beauty of this book is how it reads more like a novel than nonfiction history.
1 author picked City of Light, City of Poison as one of their favorite books, and they share why you should read it.
In the late 1600s, Louis XIV assigns Nicolas de la Reynie to bring order to the city of Paris after the brutal deaths of two magistrates. Reynie, pragmatic yet fearless, tackles the dirty and terrifying streets only to discover a tightly knit network of witches, poisoners and priests whose reach extends all the way to Versailles. As the chief investigates a growing number of deaths at court, he learns that no one is safe from their deadly love potions and "inheritance stews"-not even the Sun King himself.
Based on court transcripts and Reynie's compulsive note-taking, Holly Tucker's riveting true crime…