After L’énigme de la Blancarde and La faute de l’abbé Richaud, here’s the third volume of the Les Nouveaux mystères de Marseille, which take place at the end of

19th century. For his Marseilles newpaper "Le petit provençal", the reporter Raoul Signoret is the witness of an anarchist’s public execution. Later, he meets Bouillot, a typographer who makes him discover secrets of the anarchistic’s movement. He also helps him to penetrate secrecy of Doctor Danglars whose trial for illegal abortion proceeds at the same time. Why this man whose kindness brings him closer to poor people is hated by many of them? And which mystery does hide behind his beautiful house’s frontage of the smart district of St Giniez? Would he have brought a guilty opium’s leaning from his Far East’s stay?

Perfectly successful “serial” (like the old one..), this historical novel remains very modern and Contrucci makes proof of the same humanistic convictions we appreciate in his first two novels. It’s, among other things, the occasion for him to make a plea against the death penalty, this republican murder. With a humour allowing reader to resist the worst things, he denounces exploitation of the workers and the precarious working conditions destroying their health. In this Raoul’s third investigation, we could rejoin his wife the beautiful Cecile, aunt Thérèse and uncle Eugene, Marseilles’s security assistant. This small and pleasant family gives a kind of poetry and Mediterranean softness to this novel.