An odd little book, but one I once stayed up all night reading. Noone looks at the tale of the Man In The Iron Mask, made famous by Dumas (please, let's not think about Leonardo di Caprio) and applies wit, intelligence, research skills, and clear good sense to reach some elegantly sensible conclusions. We know there was a real prisoner, kept in special cells and kept hidden away--- though masked in velvet, not iron, when transported ---and we know that a host of wild guesses exist about his identity: twin brother of Louis XIV being the most famous, but a host of others (a bastard son of Louis, the duc de Lauzun, even Moliere) having been proposed as well. John Noone asked a simple enough question... If you were trying to hide a secret prisoner, why exactly would you take him masked into public and allow warders to sell wealthy tourists the right to see the masked prisoner in his cell? Noone turned his gaze not on the prisoner, but on his long-time jailor and then went to work in French archives to ferret out a very satisfying answer. "Man Behind the Iron Mask" is a horrifying tale in some ways--- certainly for the hapless prisoner ---but a lovely piece of research and a nicely-done look at prisons, politics, and the bureaucracy of Louis XIV's France. A small work of puzzle-solving that's well done and makes for a very enjoyable evening's reading.
Do You like book The Man Behind The Iron Mask (1980)?
