In the wake of the Dreyfus Affair, the murder of two Jews in Nancy reveals the darker side of human nature. Magistrate Bernard Martin has moved to the town of Nancy in Lorraine, France, along with his pregnant wife Clarie, who is as fervent about Republican ideals as her husband. They are not in Nancy long when an infant boy is found dead, his tiny body mutilated. The wet nurse and mother say that this was a case of “ritual sacrifice” by a “wandering tinker,” or Jew.
As Martin delves deeper into the different personalities surrounding the case, he struggles to reconcile his Republican beliefs with his growing knowledge of Nancy’s Jewish communities, all while balancing the racial tensions and politics within the courthouse. Meanwhile his beloved Clarie, now reeling from the death of her own child, seems to be falling prey to the propaganda being spewed throughout town, forcing Martin to acknowledge the frailties of the human psyche. Fearing a vigilante mob sparked by the scandal-mongering press, Bernard must unveil the murderers before Nancy experiences her own pogrom.
The body of a beautiful woman lies on the floor of a sun-baked quarry, a fragment of painted canvas shivering on a thorny branch nearby. Could Paul Cézanne be Solange Vernet&rquot;s killer?
The novice investigating magistrate Bernard Martin has only two weeks to prove that her murderer is either the artist, who is obsessively in love with Vernet, or her long-time paramour, Charles Westerbury, an English geologist with a shady past. To make the case against Cézanne or the Darwinian scientist, Martin must confront the ghosts of his own past as he struggles to understand the motives that led to Solange Vernet&rquot;s violent end.
Was her fatal strangulation merely a crime of passion? Or did she die because she dared to step outside the traditional bounds of womanhood?
The early paintings of Paul Cézanne offer crucial clues to solving the crime.
