title: Palace of Justice: An Aristide Ravel Mystery (Aristide Ravel Mysteries)
author:  Susanne Alleyn 
description: Aristide Ravel, freelance agent for the Paris police, immerses himself in another tragic murder during the French Revolution. While the bloodied guillotine works at the behest of the republican government, a killer terrorizes the populace further by leaving headless corpses strewn about the city. The brutal truth of the matter gradually emerges to reveal so-called justice gone completely mad, and a killer driven by his own twisted agenda. This fourth in the Ravel series (following A Treasury of Regrets, 2007) brings a you are there experience to a blood-soaked era in history, once again making the point that personal ideology combined with power can produce tragic results. The revolutionary chaos of Paris seen from street level, where death lurks behind every edifice, is sure to strike a chord for readers who remember A Tale of Two Cities. --Jen Baker
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  # **CHAPTER TWELVE**
  
  They were met in the entry hall by a pair of liveried servants wearing
  Vorkosigan brown and silver. In a high Vor household even the staff played
  soldier. One of them directed Bothari-Jesek away to the right. Mark could have
  wept. She despised him, but at least she was familiar. Stripped of all support
  and feeling more utterly alone than when locked in the darkness of his cabin,
  he turned to follow the other manservant through a short arched hallway and a
  set of doors on the left.
  
  He had memorized the layout of Vorkosigan House under Galen's tutelage, long
  ago, so he knew they were entering a room dubbed the First Parlor, an
  antechamber to the great library that ran from the front of the house to the
  back. By the standards of Vorkosigan House's public rooms he supposed it was
  relatively intimate, though its high ceiling seemed to lend it a cool,
  disapproving austerity. His c