For the King by Catherine Delores (Review Reprint and Giveaway)

I was contacted some time ago about hosting Catherine Delors for the paperback release of her novel, For the King. I had reviewed the hardcover version in August of last year. The reprint of this review appears below.

Here is the official blurb for the book taken from the author's website:

The Reign of Terror has ended six years earlier, and Napoléon Bonaparte has seized power, but shifting political loyalties still tear apart families and lovers.

On Christmas Eve 1800, a bomb explores along Bonaparte’s route, narrowly missing him but striking dozens of bystanders. Chief Inspector Roch Miquel, a young policeman with a bright future and a beautiful mistress, must arrest the assassins before they attack again. Complicating Miquel’s investigation are the maneuverings of his superior, the redoubtable Fouché, the indiscretions of his own father, a former Jacobin, and two intriguing women.

For The King takes readers through the dark alleys and glittering salons of post-revolutionary Paris. It is a romantic thriller, a tale of love, betrayal and redemption.

If you visit http://catherinedelors.com/for-the-king.htm you will also find an excerpt of the book to read.

Now, you have to realize, I never much considered myself a reader of books set in Paris in the early 1800's, but the author's Mistress of the Revolution, which is set in 1815, captivated me so fully, I knew I had to review For the King when it came out.

You'll find my original review below. Make sure you read to the end of this post to see how you can enter to win a FREE copy of the paperback version of this amazing novel.

On Christmas Eve in 1800, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte is on his way to the Opera when a bomb explodes on Rue Saint-Nicaise, narrowly missing Bonaparte and maiming or killing dozens of bystanders. Chief Roch Miguel has been given the task of apprehending the assassins in a city of millions, many of whom support King Louis XVIII and will do anything to overthrow Bonaparte.



The line between friend and foe is soon blurred, and Miguel is forced to trust those who most likely will betray him. Will he catch those responsible for the Rue Saint-Nicaise atrocity before the tumultuous situation in postrevolutionary Paris becomes more personal?


Bravo to Delors for following up the smashing success of Mistress of the Revolution with an equally wonderful new novel. Rich in detail, eloquently written, she pulls the reader into Napoleonic Paris with an intriguing tale based upon actual events. Blending historical and fictional characters into a thrilling investigation where revenge and betrayal play major roles, the reader follows Miguel as he seeks to uncover the hiding places of the assassins, despite the numerous obstacles placed in his way.


His personal problems are equally absorbing. His beautiful, married mistress with whom he is in love, seeks a ring. There is, of course, also Alexandrine to consider. Miguel's father had arranged a marriage between Roch and Alexandrine, and it seems she is more than willing to wait.

Character driven historical novels don't get any better than For the King by Catherine Delors. Masterful storytelling set amid the backdrop of political turmoil makes this an excellent novel. I highly recommend For the King and eagerly await this author's next book.

Author's bio:

Catherine Delors was born and raised in France. She graduated from the University of Paris-Sorbonne School of Law and became the youngest member of the Bar of Paris at the age of twenty-one.


She later moved to the United States and passed the California Bar. She worked at a few large American law firms before setting up a solo practice following the birth of her son.
She now splits her time between London and Paris, while remaining a partner in an international law firm based in Los Angeles.


Her second novel, For The King, was published in July 2010. Catherine is currently writing on a third novel, a prequel to Mistress of the Revolution. She is also researching a fourth one, which shall revolve about Jane Austen and her French connections.


Here are the rules governing this giveaway!

1) You must be a follower or subscriber of The Book Connection to win.

2) For your first entry, leave a comment with a valid email address. You can't win if you don't provide an email address.

3) One additional entry if you friend me on Facebook. Leave a comment with your profile link to show you're friending me.

4) One additional entry if you follow me on Twitter. Leave a comment with your profile link to show you're a follower.

5) Three additional entries if you blog about this contest. Leave a link to your post here.

6) One additional entry if you follow Catherine Delors on Facebook. Leave a comment with your profile link to show you're a follower.

7) One additional entry if you follow Catherine Delors on Twitter. Leave a comment with your profile link to show you're a follower.

8) Winner must be 18 years or older and reside in the United States.

Deadline for entries is 11:59 PM Eastern on Sunday, July 31, 2011. Winner will be selected out of all entrants who followed the rules governing this contest. The book will be shipped to the winner by the author's representative. The Book Connection is not responsible for lost or damaged goods.

Guest Blogger: The Story Behind Of Honest Fame by M.M. Bennetts

Today's special guest is M.M. Bennetts, author of the historical novel, Of Honest Fame.

On a summer night in 1812, a boy sets fire to a house in Paris before escaping over the rooftops. Carrying vital intelligence about Napoleon’s Russian campaign, he heads for England. But landing in Kent, he is beaten almost to death. The Foreign Secretary, Lord Castlereagh, is desperate for the boy’s information. He is even more desperate, however, to track down the boy’s assailant – a sadistic French agent who knows far too much about Castlereagh’s intelligence network. Captain George Shuster is a veteran of the Peninsula, an aide-de-camp to Wellington, now recalled from the continent and struggling to adjust to civilian life. Thomas Jesuadon is a dissolute, living on the fringes of society, but with an unrivalled knowledge of the seamy underside of the capital. Setting out to trace the boy’s attacker, they journey from the slums of London to the Scottish coast, following a trail of havoc, betrayal, official incompetence and murder. It takes an unlikely encounter with a frightened young woman to give them the breakthrough that will turn the hunter into the hunted. Meanwhile, the boy travels the breadth of Europe in the wake of the Grande Armee, witnessing at first hand the ruination they leave behind and the awful price of Napoleon’s ambition. This companion to M.M. Bennetts’s brilliant debut, May 1812, is a gripping account of deception, daring and determination, of intelligence and guile pitted against brutality. Bennetts brings to vivid life the harrowing devastation wrought on the civilian populations of Europe by Napoleon’s men, and the grit, courage and tenacity of those who stood against them.


The Story Behind Of Honest Fame by M.M. Bennetts


The story behind the story? To be honest, there are several.

Over the past several generations we’ve boxed the early nineteenth century into two categories. On the one hand, we’ve got the military swashbucklers—the Richard Sharpes, the Horatio Hornblowers and the Captain Jack Aubreys. And on the other, we’ve got the domestic version, which grew out of Jane Austen and through Georgette Heyer became Regency Romance. But where’s the stuff in the middle? The Napoleonic wars were as disastrous to Europe as WWII. They affected everybody. No one was immune. The whole of Europe had been turned into a military state and its allies by Napoleon. And I wanted to sweep away the stereotypes and explore what that really meant to the one nation which resisted that, the British people fighting it, but in different ways—political, social, international relations, spying…

The espionage is at the heart of Of Honest Fame. But because this is something that we in a modern society live with, we may not always consider what it means to live a life where everything true about you must be hidden, must be concealed. We don’t think about the pressure. We don’t consider what it must mean to be able to trust no one. We certainly don’t consider the emotional isolation and the stress of that. So I wanted to consider some of those questions.

Then too, since the fall of Communism in Eastern Europe, we have had access to the historical records there, which had been off-bounds since the Russian Revolution. These records, as well as the access to Napoleonic battlefields and mass graves—now tested and interpreted using the latest techniques in historical forensics, often by historians who speak Russian and Lithuanian and Polish—have yielded up an entirely different history of the Napoleonic wars than the official French version of the time.

We now know that the French army had an 80% infection rate of syphilis, which they were spreading. In 1812, syphilis was every bit as great a killer as AIDS was in the 1980s. The consequences of its unlimited spread through the French army’s atrocities was catastrophic. It had a devastating effect on these countries’ development for generations to come. But all those women who would have died either then or subsequently, they’ve never even been counted among the five million casualties of those wars.

We have war memorials to our fallen men. But no one has, as far as I know, even bothered to go through the parish records across these countries and count how many lives were cut short by the sexual diseases spread by the Grande Armée, nor count how many suicides there were in the wake of the occupation, those who were denied even the rites of burial in those days—which is another heinous consequence of the kind of treatment the French were regularly dishing out to the local populations. We know that from the Russian occupation of Berlin in 1945, or Serbia or Rwanda.

And upon putting together all these pieces of the puzzle, I knew I had to, in some way, honor these fallen and acknowledge their sacrifice. So the fate of the civilians whose misfortune it was to live in the path of Napoleon’s army as they crossed Europe to invade Russia in 1812 is another underlying theme.

Finally I wanted to return to historical fiction some of the literary strength of works like A Tale of Two Cities, of arresting imagery and description, of beautiful language and poetry, and wrap all of it up in one great novel–not worthy, but gripping and full of excitement.

Educated at Boston University and St Andrews, M.M. Bennetts is a specialist in the economic, social and military history of Napoleonic Europe. The author is a keen cross-country and dressage rider, as well as an accomplished pianist, regularly performing music of the era as both a soloist and accompanist. Bennetts is a long-standing book critic for The Christian Science Monitor.


The author is married and lives in England.


Bennetts’ latest book is Of Honest Fame.


You can visit the author’s website at www.mmbennetts.com.

For the King by Catherine Delors -- Book Review

If you enjoyed Mistress of the Revolution by Catherine Delors, then you'll want to own a copy of her latest novel, For the King.

On Christmas Eve in 1800, First Consul Napoleon Bonaparte is on his way to the Opera when a bomb explodes on Rue Saint-Nicaise, narrowly missing Bonaparte and maiming or killing dozens of bystanders. Chief Roch Miguel has been given the task of apprehending the assassins in a city of millions, many of whom support King Louis XVIII and will do anything to overthrow Bonaparte.

The line between friend and foe is soon blurred, and Miguel is forced to trust those who most likely will betray him. Will he catch those responsible for the Rue Saint-Nicaise atrocity before the tumultuous situation in postrevolutionary Paris becomes more personal?

Bravo to Delors for following up the smashing success of Mistress of the Revolution with an equally wonderful new novel. Rich in detail, eloquently written, she pulls the reader into Napoleonic Paris with an intriguing tale based upon actual events. Blending historical and fictional characters into a thrilling investigation where revenge and betrayal play major roles, the reader follows Miguel as he seeks to uncover the hiding places of the assassins, despite the numerous obstacles placed in his way.

His personal problems are equally absorbing. His beautiful, married mistress with whom he is in love, seeks a ring. There is, of course, also Alexandrine to consider. Miguel's father had arranged a marriage between Roch and Alexandrine, and it seems she is more than willing to wait.

Character driven historical novels don't get any better than For the King by Catherine Delors. Masterful storytelling set amid the backdrop of political turmoil makes this an excellent novel. I highly recommend For the King and eagerly await this author's next book.


Title: For the King
Author: Catherine Delors
Publisher: Dutton
ISBN-10: 0525951741
ISBN-13: 978-0525951742
SRP: $26.95