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 "e;Little Demon"e; 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.