The Man in the Iron Mask: The True Story of the Most Famous Prisoner in History and the Four Musketeers

I simply couldn't put it down. The whole book really gets you inside 17thC France and you can feel the evil that surrounds Louis XIV's Court. It's a complicated story but the author is such a master of his subject, you only have to pull slowly on the thread and the next clinching fact is revealed. Take Eustache Danger for instance. He has been the last credible solution to the identity of the Iron Mask for some time, but MacDonald quietly demolishes this theory by showing exactly who Danger is: a poisoner working for the French war minister, Louvois, and who eventually commits suicide after Louvois has shut him up in the remote prison called Pignerol to keep him safely out of the way. Once Danger is eliminated, in every sense, there HAS to be an alternative solution and the author shows how it can only be, incredible though it sounds, the great d'Artagnan. He knows far too much for his own good about Louis's dubious parentage and he is always objecting to some of the murkier practices at Court. His supposed death in 1673 at the siege of Maastricht is shown to be a put-up job and instead he, too, ends up in Pignerol. He is the only solution that really fits the facts. Louvois and the king can't kill him because d'Artagnan's jailer is his former sergeant, Saint-Mars, who owes d'Artagnan his job and has no intention of getting rid of the goose that lays him losts of golden eggs. D'Artagnan has to wear the iron mask to stop Saint-Mars's men, all former musketeers, from finding out and helping him escape. Astonishingly, MacDonald shows how there were two secret prisoners for several years. The second was former finance minister Fouquet, tormented by Louis like a cat plays with a mouse. Fouquet was promised his freedom but Louis found he had seduced the king's second wife Francois Scarron and instead had him locked up again in secret. Courtilz, d'Artagnan's first biographer, is by chance locked up in the Bastille at the same time as the Mask and realises who he is. The book also has fascinating information about the Three Musketeers, how they came to fight the Cardinal's Guards with d'Artagnan's accidental help. Athos is later killed helping d'Artagnan, Aramis gets lucky and marries an heiress, and Porthos lives on to the ripe old age of 95! The notes are packed with extra facts and are written in a hugely entertaining way, so you almost get two books for the price of one.