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.
Martin begins with an interesting narrative of the origins of the French police.
His account, both of the employment and the exploitation of criminals and informants by the French police, is particularly informative, but after about fifteen pages of such narrative he switches to successive biographical sketches of the various directors of the Srete. Ten pages later we encounter a narrative of the careers of several notorious criminals, followed only a few pages later by a description of a typical day of a director of the Srete, followed by a descrip- tion of the techniques for policing Parisian prostitutes. By the time the reader completes the two chapters on the police, puzzle- ment, just short of confusion seems the most likely outcome, for there is no continuous theme. And after that the subject of punishment is dispatched in only thirteen pages. There is much of interest here, but each subject skims the surface.