A serious scholar also occasionally might find interesting bits and pieces, but the book hardly deserves a consecutive front to back reading. Picking out the good bits is a better option. For one thing, the book sometimes lurches surprisingly from one topic to another. Let me illustrate. The beginning is fairly auspicious.
Martin begins with a description of the most common crimes during the Third Republic.
Four crimes, grand larceny, girl molestation, unpremeditated murder and premeditated murder accounted for more than 57 percent of reported felonies. At that point I thought the book would explore the causes and nature of that phenomenon, and I was indeed interested in learning more. Alas, very little more was forthcoming. If so, sexual repression seems an unlikely contemporary cause. But the reader will learn no more from this book, for the next chapter turns to the police.