The Crimes of Paris: A true story of murder, theft and detection
WHAT NOT TO EXPECT
Let me preface this by saying that if you are imagining the entire book to be about the theft of the Mona Lisa, you will be sorely disappointed.I read the cover of the title, and then promptly forgot about it as I flipped to read the inside of the dust jacket.
The dust jacket claimed to talk about Bertillon and the theft of the Mona Lisa, which I had now assumed was the whole point of the book.
So, I then read the entire book from front to back, and at the end, I was feeling a bit enraged that the Mona Lisa was just a chapter or so.
FB: “Who the hell claims to talk about the Mona Lisa and then doesn’t really write about it!?”Anyway, even though the book jacket is misleading, I just wanted to forewarn you. It’s about GENERAL crimes in Paris and the start of modern crime and its criminals, NOT entirely about the Mona Lisa.
A BIT ABOUT MONA LISA
I did learn a lot more about her however. Her real name (or so they think) was Lisa Ghiradelli, and she was 24 years old when she sat for Leonardo, for a painting commissioned by her husband.
They think that Leonardo became enamoured with his muse and painted a couple of copies, in addition to putting some of his features in the painting (?).
They call her “La Joconde” in French, and “Gioconda” in Italian.
No one knows why she smiles the way she does, but his use of the brush to create a sfumato effect of blurring the facial lines makes her so gentle and realistic, as if flesh is on the actual painting.
A way to tell the original apart from the fakes is the craqueleure on the painting, that is only achieved naturally over time.
They believe there are 30 Mona Lisa forgeries out there, and no one wants to ‘fess up because they’re afraid of getting caught, so private collectors keep them hidden.
Leonardo also switched the positions of her hands before finishing the painting, another surefire way of telling that you have the original, using special paint x-rays to see through all the layers of paint.
I still don’t get the idea of worshipping her, the way some do. It’s just a painting. A great one, a classic.. but still just a painting.
WHAT TO EXPECT
It is more of a chronicle of crime, criminals and how the detectives found them.
This book will make you more interested in art, culture, Paris, and crime in general, and it teaches you a LOT.
A great read if you are really fascinated about the early days of crime, particularly crime in France, with the focus on Paris. It talks in general about the different crimes committed, who the criminals were, their backgrounds, and their motives for committing these crimes (some known, some not).
Strangely, the French were more on the side of the villains than the good guys (the cops), and cheered when the bad guy got away. No smart ass comment there……………………….(okay just one. Have you noticed that in a lot of American movies, Frenchmen or European men are always portrayed as the evil bad guys? Food for thought.)
It also talks about the police officers and detectives who caught these criminals, using the same logic and rationale of criminals to do so.
The most famous of all being Alphonse Bertillon, who had an unremarkable childhood, and was pronounced by many to be a failure. He came up with the modern-day technique of photographing prisoners from the front and their sides, as well as measuring them.
He however, was a proud man, and unable to admit when he was wrong, so it is assumed that he sent a couple of innocent men to jail.
Nevertheless, his method of photographing every inch of a crime scene, taking pictures of prisoners as well as their measurements gave rise to a technique called bertillonage, named after him. Its modern-day successor is today’s biometrics, or the art of a computer taking close to 8000 points on a person’s face and using it as a way to find criminals in a large computer database regardless of hair colour or disguise.
As for fingerprinting, Bertillon was unfortunately against it, because he couldn’t believe that fingerprints were a good way of telling people apart. However, the realiability and close infallibility of fingerprints were discovered by Juan Vucetich, an Argentinean who became the Bertillon of the Americas, and it was proven when two criminals, both named Will West looked quite similar, and had the exact measurements as taken by bertillonage, but the only way to tell them apart was using their fingerprints.
(By the way, your fingerprints are with you for life. Even if you burn them off, they will come back exactly the same.)
It also talks about the rise of criminal fiction such as Sherlock Holmes in England penned by Sir Arthur Conan Doyle who turned his nose up at his fictional counterpart, Monsieur Lecoq by Emile Gaboriau.
And it was a well known fact that those fictional detective writers took inspiration from murderers, and vice versa. If you were a detective of that time, reading Sherlock Holmes was almost a pre-requisite, as Doyle’s uncanny ability to think of gruesome, strange murder scenes all solved with a neat solution was actually the base of many actual captures in France.
Couple of examples: a monkey being used to steal jewels, or pink lady’s makeup found under a fingernail of her ex-husband who was suspected of killing her.
All of these hunches, were inspired by Doyle’s fictional Holmes.
Edgar Allan Poe played a large role in inspiring these authors to come up with such gruesome descriptions of crimes that it made you shiver.
But the one man who inspired Doyle and all of these fiction writers was a man named Francois-Eugene Vidocq, a real-life, modern day Sherlock Holmes.
He actually started his life as a criminal, unable to prove his worth by working at mundane, normal jobs.
He finally offered his services (after his dad pulled a couple of strings) to the French Police, and proved after a couple of arrests that he was not meant to be a criminal, but to have a criminal’s mind to aid the police and to keep society safe.
He had a couple of amazing cases where he went undercover (as we’d call it today), bandied about his reputation as a criminal, gained their trust, learned of heists and thefts that would go down and then he would signal and have them arrested.
The keys to Vidocq’s success was his incredible memory and ability to be a chameleon, much like Holmes — turning into so many fantastic characters, that he was like a ghost.
It also went into a LOT of detail about Picasso, some about Matisse, Proust.. all the great artists of the time — writers, poets.. it was incredible.
I learned so much more about Picasso and how he envisioned a 4th dimension to his paintings, and how he only enjoyed some of genius near the end, when he was finally recognized for his work.
And if all of the above doesn’t whet your appetite to read the book, if you are fascinated by murderers and what went through their head as they did the deed, there are some direct quotes from murderers in the book.
Here’s one chilling one, to end my review:
“To kill without remorse, is the highest of pleasures.
It is impossible to destroy my hatred of mankind. This hatred is the product of a lifetime, the outcome of my every thought.
I never pitied any one who suffered, and I don’t wnat to be pitied myself.“
Penned by Pierre-Francois Lacenaire (originally his last name was Gaillard), as he faced the guillotine.
Kind of creepy to think of killing as a pleasure.
NOW FOR SOME BAD POINTS ABOUT THE BOOK
If you want to get to the good stuff, skip to Chapter 3. Chapters 1 and 2 are just.. so LONG.. you are going to want to give up, if you are impatient like I am.
I kept hearing each painstakingly written description after description of Paris at the time, and I know it was meant to set the mood.. but I wanted to get to it!
It also seemed as though two people were writing the book, because there were points where it didn’t merge gracefully, but went from one aspect of Paris to another.. or just felt disjointed.
Then I saw it was a husband and wife team (Dorothy and Thomas Hoobler) and all was explained.
WHAT ABOUT THE MONA LISA?
After I got past the first 2 chapters, the Mona Lisa theft was actually the most boring one of all. Anti-climatic, to say the least.
I actually wanted them to go through the theft of the Mona Lisa as a whole near the end rather than dispersing the story throughout the book — that lent to its disjointed nature, like when you’re flipping through a magazine and you’re really into a story about this girl’s awkward life, and then it says “Flip to Page 2053584 to finish reading”.
It wasn’t the most interesting murder or case, and the great parts of the book involve a woman (of course), a motive and very f*cked up people who had their lives shaped by being rejected at one point or another, and turned to crime.
MY RATING:
I’d rate this book a solid 8/10. It was an engrossing read, even after the first two chapters that threatened to make me use the book as a door stopper.
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