Death in the City of Light: The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris

From Eileen Effrat
Author:  David King
Death in the City of Light:    The Serial Killer of Nazi-Occupied Paris
If you were mesmerized by Eric Larson’s  Devil in the White City,  try this meticulously researched and  very readable account of Marcel Petiot, a Parisian doctor accused and convicted of brutally murdering  at least  twenty-seven people between 1941- 1944. War time Paris was in pandemonium, as the German Gestapo, French Gestapo, gangsters and   resistance fighters vied for power and indiscriminately killed.   For Commissaire George-Victor Massau, the  investigating police  officer  for the case, this was a political minefield.  Anyone of those factions could be involved. The trial in 1946 was a circus as it attempted to try all 27 cases at once.   Although convicted and sentenced to death, many questions were never answered   and still remain a mystery. Was Petiot allied with the Gestapo or the French resistance?  Or  neither?  How did he initially kill his victims?  This is a true crime story that vividly describes Paris in the Second World War.

Advertisement