The Paris Train Killer

Book Reviews

On September 12, the body of a man was found at night on the railroad tracks of the Paris-Mulhouse line, between Zillisheim and Illfurth. At first, the railroad workers, the police, and the justice system thought that the man had fallen onto the rails accidentally. But it soon became apparent that they were dealing with a crime…

Police Commissioner Élie Singer took charge of the case personally, rushing to the scene and rolling up his sleeves, despite the flecks of coal flying off the train cars, in order to tease out the threads of this particularly difficult mystery…

This is the new book from a novelist who explores fascinating criminal cases that took place over the past two centuries.

Paul Maugendre, Les lectures de l’oncle Paul (March 22, 2013)

Viviane Janouin-Benanti’s The Paris Train Killer – A French True Crime Thriller is one of those books that quietly pulls you into a very specific time and place and then refuses to let go. Set under the Second Empire of Napoléon III and based entirely on a real case, it blends police procedural, social history, and psychological portrait of a rising modern criminal. The result is a thriller that feels immersive and oddly intimate: you’re not just watching a manhunt, you’re watching a country grapple with the dangers of its brand-new railways and the limits of its own justice system.

If you enjoy true crime, historical mysteries, or procedural novels that respect your intelligence, The Paris Train Killer offers a lot to savor:

• A gripping double case that begins as an enigmatic attempted murder and escalates into the assassination of a high-profile judge, both tied together by the same eerie train line.
• A compelling investigator in Élie Singer, whose quiet persistence and personal grief give emotional weight to the chase.
• A richly evoked setting, from rural Alsace crossing huts to the bustling Gare de l’Est, set against the background of Napoléon III’s fragile, authoritarian regime.
• A disturbing portrait of an early “modern” criminal, a young man who uses disguises, mobility, and the anonymity of trains to turn robbery into near-perfect, almost recreational violence.
• A strong sense of reality, bolstered by the incorporation of actual documents and the refusal to tidy the messiness of real history into a conventional happy ending.

This isn’t a whodunit where you sit with a checklist and try to guess the culprit from a list of suspects in a country house. From fairly early on, the reader knows—or strongly suspects—who the killer is. The suspense lies instead in whether Singer and his colleagues can prove it, and whether the machinery of mid-nineteenth-century justice can possibly catch up with a criminal who uses the very latest technology, the railway, to stay permanently in motion.

In short, The Paris Train Killer – A French True Crime Thriller is both an engrossing read and a fascinating window into the birth of modern fear: fear of strangers on trains, of random violence, of killers who slip away into crowds and across borders. If that mix of atmosphere, history, and investigative drama appeals to you, this book is very much worth taking a journey with—preferably from the safety of your armchair, rather than a lonely first-class compartment at night.

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