Never in his long career has Nicolas Le Floch seen such vicious crimes. In the spring of 1791, two bodies have been found, one after the other, in Paris’s Luxembourg neighborhood: the first had one arm and one leg cut off, the second’s back had received dozens of lashes with a whip. For good measure, they had been hanged too, which was the cause of death. Both of the murdered noblemen had owned sugar-cane plantations in the French colony of Saint Domingue.

With his former deputy, Bourdeau, Nicolas, a special agent for the monarchy, figures out that the mutilations were modeled on the punishments inflicted by plantation owners on fugitive slaves in accordance with the black code, a decree passed by Louis XIV to regulate the repression of transgressions committed by slaves in French colonies. Is it a case of island-inflicted revenge? Or else a far more devious plot hatched for political reasons?

Paris, 1791: The Revolution is starting to catch on, the Constituent Assembly is trying to stabilize the kingdom, and Louis XVI is defending his throne at the Tuileries Palace. While the city is in thrall to waves of popular emotion aroused by the most intransigeant patriots, our two intrepid police officers are trying to unravel the complex tangle of clues over a backdrop of conflict between political factions. Over the course of this fast-paced intrigue, Nicolas will have to grasp the finer points of the battle for abolition that’s just getting started between the Friends of the Blacks Society, which supports racial equality, and the Massiac Club, a powerful organization of colonial stakeholders. Above all, he will have to go up against the formidable thugs in the Green Man Gang, which has taken up residence in Paris’s underground quarries. In the meantime, he’ll have to cope with a conflict between Laure de Fitz-James and Aimée d’Arranet, both of whom he was secretly involved with, which is putting him in an extremely awkward position.

In the spring of 1791, the bodies of two noblemen who had owned sugar-cane plantations in Saint-Domingue have been found in Paris. Nicolas, a special agent for the monarchy, figures out that the mutilations were modeled on the punishments inflicted on fugitive slaves by plantation owners in accordance with the black code. Is it a case of island-inflicted revenge, or a far more devious plot?