At the court of young King Louis XVI , conspiracies abound...Under the distrustful eye of his new boss at the Chatelet, Nicolas Le Floch investigates the bizarre death of a maid at the home of Monsieur de Saint-Florentin, the King's minister. When a second murder is washed up by the Seine with the same curious injuries, events begin to gather pace, leading Le Floch to Versailles, as he attempts to solve what is far more than a simple case of murder.

In the sixth of the Nicolas Le Floch mysteries, Le Floch investigates a baker’s death amid outcry at soaring bread prices, told 'in splendid period detail' [Sunday Times]. ‘An engaging murder mystery' FT 1775. Commissioner Nicolas Le Floch is on a diplomatic mission to Vienna, ostensibly to deliver a bust of Marie Antoinette to her mother, the Empress Maria Theresa. His real task, however, is to investigate the breakdown of French secret intelligence in Austria. The city is a hotbed of plotting – and Nicolas only just survives an attempt on his life. On his return to France, Paris is in turmoil. The soaring price of grain and bread is causing widespread social unrest, and Nicolas’ first police case is the unexplained death of a baker. Could it be that events in the French capital are somehow connected to his experiences in Vienna …?

What is an organization? What are the building blocks that ultimately constitute this social form, so pervasive in our daily life? Like Augustine facing the problem of time, we all know what an organization is, but we seem unable to explain it. This book brings an original answer by mobilizing concepts traditionally reserved to linguistics, analytical philosophy, and semiotics. Based on Algirdas Julien Greimas’ semio-narrative model of action and Jacques Derrida’s concept of écriture, a reconceptualization of speech act theory is proposed in which communication is treated as an act of delegation where human and nonhuman agents are mobilized (texts, machines, employees, architectural elements, managers, etc.). Perfectly congruent with the last development of the sociology of translation developed by Michel Callon and Bruno Latour, this perspective illustrates the organizing property of communication through a process called ‘interactoriality’. Jacques Lacan used to say that the unconscious is structured like a language. This book shows that a social organization is structured like a narrative.

2nd Nicolas Le Floch investigation - a sinister death at the opera reveals something rotten at the French court.

Paris, 1774. Commissioner Le Floch's stormy love affair with socialite Julie de Lasterieux has run its course. But before Nicolas can formally end the relationship, Julie is found murdered in her bed, a victim of poisoning. For now, he retains the confidence of even the King, who sends him on a secret intelligence mission. But a plot is afoot to implicate Nicolas in Julie's death, and he is soon fighting to uncover the perpetrators and clear his name."