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This is a detective story based on the police files of a real case. But don't expect shootouts, car chases and Sam Spade look-a-likes. This true life crime story is a little bit different.
The main point of difference is that the police files that the story is based on are not those of the New York or San Francisco police departments. Or even London. They are from Paris...in the 18th century. That's right, there were cops in those days, and they kept files too. What Judith Merkle Riley has done is take the records of one of the strangest stories from the police files of pre-revolutionary France, and made them into a novel.
Of course this requires a bit more work than a 1970s New York story. For one thing, everyone knows what the background is in a more familiar setting. There are a lot of things that don't need explaining in a contempory story, the clothing, the social structure, the attitudes, even what is or is not a crime. These all have to be set out in an historical tale, and Judith Merkle Riley does them very well.
Where it does get a little bit easier is that by the 18th century, upper class Paris society had evolved to a point where we can understand most of how they think. A modern reader will dislike their attitudes and scorn their knowledge, but at least we can understand them enough to do so. A more exotic setting does not have this luxury. For comparison see A Vision of Light by the same author. This is set in the 1350s, in England, and, because the people are accurately portrayed, they are just about impossible to work out.
Reading over that last sentence again I think I overstated the problem. It is not impossible to work them out, it is just that we have to work them out, with more modern characters we just know what they would think, without having to work it out.
So in conclusion, The Oracle Glass is a very fine example of two quite different genres, the true life police novel, and the historical novel, and the combination is both entertaining and educational.
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Other Judith Merkle Riley books that I have not yet read are:
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