The Strange Death of Napoleon Bonaparte

While the odd circumstances of Napoleon Bonaparte's death on St. Helena would seem a promising starting point for a whodunit, Labriola (The Budapest Legend with forensic expert Henry C. Lee) fails to make good use of his material. Paul D'Arneau, a Yale history professor, has just been ousted from his post because of his theory that the famed diplomat Talleyrand poisoned the emperor with arsenic when he serendipitously receives an e-mail from a shadowy French group offering him a six-figure fee and all expenses paid to solve the mystery of Bonaparte's death. For reasons never adequately explained, D'Arneau's subsequent probes attract unwelcome attention and place his life and those of his colleagues in danger. This effort to beef up the action may strike some readers as especially jarring in the light of the far-fetched solution to the case.