The courtesan and the gigolo: the murders in the Rue Montaigne and the dark side of empire in nineteenth-century Paris
From Widows' Allée to Avenue Montaigne : elite cosmopolitanism and gentrification in western Paris -- The crime scene : gathering the evidence and searching for a motive -- A reporter's ambition : George Grison and the rise of investigative crime reporting in Paris -- The courtesan's objects : sexual danger and the high life of the demimonde -- Colonial picaresque : the trans-Mediterranean investigation of a colonial migrant -- Criminal detection as colonial war by other means : investigative claims on the Latin-American "rastaquouère" -- The trial of a gigolo : intimacy, foreignness, and the Boulangist crisis -- The skin affair : punishment and the colonial body -- Conclusion : on imperial insecurity