Young King Jaron has taken the throne of Carthya, but after enemies attempt to assassinate him, and a neighboring kingdom threatens invasion, he finds that he has no friends in the palace, not even his bride-to-be, Princess Amarinda--and his regents think it would be better for Carthya if he just disappeared again.

Vidocq! Master of disguise and chief of a newly created plainclothes police force, Vidocq is a man whose name sends terror rippling through the Parisian underworld of 1818-and the inconsequential life of Hector Carpentier is violently shaken when Vidocq storms into it. A former medical student living in his mother's Latin Quarter boardinghouse, Hector finds himself dragged into a dangerous mystery surrounding the fate of the dauphin, the ten-year-old...