death in the city of light by david king

Given the time period, it was hard not to make connections with the Holocaust, especially since Petiot targeted Jews over other victims, often by pretending to be a member of the French Resistance who would get them safely out of Nazi-occupied Paris, instead killing them and stealing their valuables. Horrified, the fire chief ordered his men out of the basement. The stench of scorched and decomposing flesh was overpowering.

A split torso and two other skulls lay on the floor.

Arms and legs had been strewn about in parts. On the far staircase was a pile of debris, which turned out to be a skull, a rib cage, and several other recognizable bones. Jutting out were the charred remains of a human hand. It was fireman Roger Bérody who opened the iron door. One of the two coal stoves there was roaring furiously. …the small team of firefighters traced the peculiar, nauseating smell to a small room in the basement.

I often winced as I pictured the murders, and at the details of how the murderer disposed of the bodies. Unlike when reading fiction, however, it was difficult to feel myself a safe distance from the crimes. This particular book was very focused on the police work as well as the psychology of the killer. Since my knowledge of serial killers mostly comes from fiction, it was very interesting to see how this true case was like and unlike those I’d read in novels and seen in movies. I don’t normally read true crime, but was attracted to this one by the setting, Paris during the Occupation in World War Two, and remained intrigued with the story of the police work of the period. Petiot, however, would soon be charged with twenty-seven murders, though authorities suspected the total was considerably higher, perhaps even as many as 150. He was the “People’s Doctor,” known for his many acts of kindness and generosity, not least in providing free medical care for the poor. Marcel Petiot, a handsome, charming physician with remarkable charisma. As decapitated heads and dismembered body parts surfaced in the Seine, Commissaire Georges-Victor Massu, head of the Brigade Criminelle, was tasked with tracking down the elusive murderer in a twilight world of Gestapo, gangsters, resistance fighters, pimps, prostitutes, spies, and other shadowy figures of the Parisian underworld. Death in the City of Light by David King is the gripping, true story of a brutal serial killer who unleashed his own reign of terror in Nazi-occupied Paris.

Death in the city of light by david king