de Sade's Valet

In 18th-century France, science and reason are beginning to topple the old regime. But beneath the enlightened surface, injustice, superstition and licentiousness are still at work. Latour Quiros grows up with a twisted attitude towards women, an unhealthy interest in cruelty and an inability to feel physical or emotional pain, which lead him to Paris, to the study of anatomy and to murder. Thinking mistakenly that his mother was poisoned, he sets out to kill eight people on a list he finds among her effects, dissecting his victims to try to find the seat of pain. In a brothel, he encounters the Marquis de Sade, who employs him as his valet. Latour soon finds his life beginning to echo that of the Marquis; the story follows their parallel careers as libertine and serial killer, culminating in the madhouse at Charenton. Frobenius's book is fable, pathology, historical and philosophical enquiry and crime novel, all in one. His characters are caught up in webs of power and sexuality which echo the writings of Freud, Artaud and Foucault. Latour actually existed, but in this novel he becomes more important than de Sade as an example of how extreme behaviour arises and is policed. In the end, it is Latour who virtually rewrites de Sade's works. Through Latour's murderous application of scalpel and pen, Frobenius also questions the objectivity of scientists and artists who take nature apart to find out how it works. As tightly written as a thriller, cutting between incidents and narrators, we pursue a killer's career with horror and fascination, and try to work out how much he is responsible for his actions and how much can be attributed to the society he lives in. (Kirkus UK)