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A delicious account of a murder most gallic - think CSI Paris meets Georges Simenon - whose 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 thrilling - and so wonderfully French - story of a gruesome 1889 murder of a lascivious court official at the hands of a ruthless con man and his pliant mistress and the international 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 Gouff entered 3, rue Tronson du Coudray, he expected nothing but a delightful assignation with the comely young Gabrielle Bompard.