The Masked Man

By Paul Doherty

Book Overview

Ralph Croft, an English rogue, is plucked from the dungeon of the Bastille to head an investigation into the true identity of the masked man. He has to face brutal imprisonment, threats and countless... This description may be from another edition of this product.

• Format: Hardcover
• Language: English
• ISBN: 0312064098
• ISBN13: 9780312064099
• Release Date: January 1991
• Publisher: St Martins Pr
• Length: 174 Pages
• Weight: 0.80 lbs.
• Dimensions: 8.5" x 5.9" x 0.9"

Customer Reviews

Iron Masks and Templars

This is a novel of ideas, an attempt to unveil the man in the iron mask by means of fiction. The story is told in the first person by a fictional Englishman named Ralph Croft who by a series of incidents ends up in the Bastille sentenced to death shortly after the death of Louis XIV, i.e, after 1715. Instead of being executed, however, he is given a chance to earn a pardon by helping the Regent, Louis XIV's nephew who governed France in the name of the child-king Louis XV, who wants to know the identity of the man in the iron mask.Croft is assisted by two men, Captain Estivet and a man named Maurepas who we discover has links to a secret organization descended from the Knights Templar that plots to overthrow the French monarchy. Croft has been selected for this task because he is an expert forger and can identify forged documents. He also has contacts in the Paris underworld.Historical note: Rumors that a prisoner was being held who wore a mask may have begun circulating as early as 1687 in France. The first certifiable document we have dates from October 1711 when the Regent's mother writes two letters to her cousin about these rumors saying that the prisoner had died shortly before and that he was an English milord. This rumor gained a life of its own with all manner of speculation as to the identity of the prisoner. Was he the king's twin brother? Half-brother? A close relative? Was he some other wellknown personality? Was he someone who looked like the king? Or someone who had doublecrossed Louis XIV in some unforgivable way?Doherty packs as many of the theories as he can in a novel of less than 180 pages. I'll let the reader discover which theory Croft comes to believe. Doherty introduces the novel by stating that he has decoded a love letter that might reveal the truth about this prisoner's identity and he has included his solution in the novel.The best non-fiction account in English in John Noone's The Man Behind the Iron Mask. The best book of all is Jean-Christian Petitfils' Le Masque de fer. Both men agree on the identity of this mysterious prisoner and they do not agree with Doherty. Petitfils includes a list of all the theories of the identity of this person and where they have appeared in books and literature over the last 300 years. Doherty has picked a theory that has been around for a long time.This book includes sword fights, meetings with powerful criminal lords, meetings with powerful lords and officials, and a meeting of the mysterious Templar organization. Shades of the Da Vinci code, except that this powerful organization does not call itself the Priory of Sion.