cover image The Prince Lost to Time

The Prince Lost to Time

Ann Dukthas. St. Martin's Press, $21.95 (0pp) ISBN 978-0-312-13592-8

Nicholas Segalla, the man who ``claimed he had been alive for centuries'' returns (after A Time for the Death of a King) for a second time-travel mystery. It is 1815. Napoleon's defeat has opened the door for the restoration of France's Bourbon monarchy, but who is the rightful heir? The Dauphin Louis Charles, son of the guillotined Louis XVI and Marie-Antoinette, would be the obvious choice, but he is said to have died in 1795 and his uncle has claimed the throne as Louis XVIII. Segalla, in France as ``special emissary of the English prime minister'' to investigate, allies himself with government archivist Raoul Tallien, to negotiate the plots and subplots of former Revolutionaries, Royalists and a nervous Louis XVIII, who stands to lose the throne should his nephew turn up alive. While Segalla himself remains somewhat of a mysterious character, Dukthas constructs a riveting plot to help readers make their way through the intricacies of the historical setting, rewarding their perseverance with an astonishing solution. (Nov.)