Publisher Description
A delicious account of a murder most gallic—think CSI Paris meets Georges Simenon—whose lurid combination of sex, brutality, forensics, and hypnotism riveted first a nation and then the world. Little Demon in the City of Light is the thrilling—and so wonderfully French—story of a gruesome 1889 murder of a lascivious court official at the hands of a ruthless con man and his pliant mistress and the international manhunt, sensational trial, and an inquiry into the limits of hypnotic power that ensued. In France at the end of the nineteenth century a great debate raged over the question of whether someone could be hypnotically compelled to commit a crime in violation of his or her moral convictions. When Toussaint-Augustin Gouffé entered 3, rue Tronson du Coudray, he expected nothing but a delightful assignation with the comely young Gabrielle Bompard. Instead, he was murdered—hanged!—by her and her companion Michel Eyraud. The body was then stuffed in a trunk and dumped on a riverbank near Lyon. As the inquiry into the guilt or innocence of the woman the French tabloids dubbed the “Little Demon” escalated, the most respected minds in France debated whether Gabrielle Bompard was the pawn of her mesmerizing lover or simply a coldly calculating murderess. And, at the burning center of it all: Could hypnosis force people to commit crimes against their will?
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“Filled with clever and determined
detectives (quotes from Sûreté chief Marie-François Goron’s own memoir are
included), theories about criminology, opinionizing by such luminaries as
writer Émile Zola, and the ambience of an era that arguably can’t be matched
for its guilelessness. Levingston’s smartly chipper prose and fine attention to
detail—down to the otter trim on Gabrielle’s hat—add an entertaining and
authentic sensibility to this re-creation of a culture, a crime, and the first
time an accused murderer had put forward a hypnotism defense.”—
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