Violette Noziere: A Story of Murder in 1930s Paris

"Maza explains brilliantly how and why Violette's story-or a culturally acceptable version of her story-grew from being a mere fait divers, or miscellaneous news item, into a nationally staged drama that bound France in schadenfreude-laced fascination near the end of the turbulent and divisive Third Republic. Combining a neatly suspenseful account of Violette's crime and its consequences with a richly layered cultural history ... she skillfully analyzes Violette's transformation from wretched schoolgirl to cultural icon." -- Judith Warner New York Times Book Review "Grittily cinematic." -- Megan O'Grady Vogue "An academic history with a pulpy noir heart." Publishers Weekly "The story itself is so fascinating that general readers interested in crime and mystery will be enthralled." -- Marie Marmo Mullaney Library Journal "Excellent... Maza gorgeously weaves together social history, crime culture, gender theory, and thorough research." -- Oline Eaton New Books In Biography "[An] excellent new biography... Maza gorgeously weaves together social history, crime culture, gender theory, and thorough research." -- Oline Eaton New Books In Biography "A true-life detective tale set not amid the glamour and romance of a well-touristed Paris but in a secret city that runs thick with the lives of the forgotten and the abandoned." -- David Kennedy Jones T: The New York Times Style Magazine "Compelling... A brief review cannot convey the elegance and persuasiveness of Maza's version of this famous case." -- Robert A. Nye, Oregon State University Journal Of Modern History A well-researched and thoroughly readable account of French culture as revealed in a generally forgotten murder case." -- Jaime O'Neill Chico News & Review "The trial captivated France, and readers will be just as captivated by Maza's study of Noziere and the culture of interwar France." -- Eric Feil Dan's Hamptons

On an August evening in 1933, in a quiet, working-class neighborhood in Paris, eighteen-year-old Violette Noziere gave her mother and father glasses of barbiturate-laced "medication", which she told them had been prescribed by the family doctor; one of her parents died, the other barely survived. Almost immediately Violette's act of "double parricide" became the most sensational private crime of the French interwar era - discussed and debated so passionately that it was compared to the Dreyfus Affair. Why would the beloved only child of respectable parents do such a thing? To understand the motives behind this crime and the reasons for its extraordinary impact, Sarah Maza delves into the abundant case records, re-creating the daily existence of Parisians whose lives were touched by the affair. This compulsively readable book brilliantly evokes the texture of life in 1930s Paris. It also makes an important argument about French society and culture while proposing new understandings of crime and social class in the years before World War II.