Why Kings Confess

A young French physician is found mutilated in one of London's worst slums, a badly injured woman beside him with no memory of the attack. The woman, Alexi Sauvage, is connected to a moment in Sebastian St. Cyr's wartime past that nearly destroyed him, and her presence forces him to confront what he did and what was done to him in France. The investigation leads into a secret Napoleonic peace delegation and the centuries-old mystery of the Lost Dauphin, the boy prince who vanished in the French Revolution.

Davina Porter handles the novel's most personally demanding material with full command, giving Sebastian's confrontation with his own past the weight it requires while keeping the historical mystery in focus. The pregnancy of his wife Hero and the approaching birth of their child run as a counterpoint to the investigation's dangers, and Porter manages the emotional layering with precision. At just over ten and a half hours, this ninth entry in the series is one of its most ambitious.