A delicious account of a murder most gallicthink CSI Paris meets Georges Simenonwhose lurid combination of sex, brutality, forensics, and hypnotism riveted first a nation and then the world.Little Demon in the City of Light is the thrillingand so wonderfully Frenchstory of a gruesome 1889 murder of a lascivious court official at the hands of a ruthless con man andhis pliant mistress and theinternational manhunt, sensational trial, and an inquiry into the limits of hypnotic power that ensued.In France at the end of the nineteenth century a great debate raged over the question of whether someone could be hypnotically compelled to commit a crime in violation of his or her moral convictions. When Toussaint-Augustin Gouffe entered 3, rue Tronson du Coudray, he expected nothing but a delightful assignation with the comely young Gabrielle Bompard. Instead, he wasmurderedhanged!by her and her companion Michel Eyraud. The body was then stuffed in a trunk and dumped on a riverbank near Lyon.As the inquiry into the guilt or innocence of the woman the French tabloids dubbed the "Little Demon" escalated, the most respected minds in France debated whether Gabrielle Bompard was the pawn of her mesmerizing lover or simply a coldly calculating murderess. And, at the burning center of it all: Could hypnosis force people to commit crimes against their will?From the Hardcover edition.