"As the social and political turbulence of the Franco-Prussian War roils [1870 Paris], workers starve to death while aristocrats seek refuge in orgies and séances. The Parisians are trapped like rats in their beautiful city but a series of gruesome murders captures their fascination and distracts them from the realities of war. The killer leaves lines from the recently deceased Charles Baudelaire's controversial anthology Les fleurs du mal on each corpse, written in the poet's exact handwriting"--Dust jacket flap.