France, 1761. Young Nicolas Le Floche arrives in Paris and begins to study the craft of a detective from Lieutenant General of the Royal Police Mr. Sartin, an investigator for special cases, who instructs Nicolas to investigate the disappearance of Commissioner Larden. It is necessary not only to find out whose corpse was discovered in the basement of the house on the rue Blanc-Manteau, where the commissioner lived, but also to find the secret correspondence kept by Larden, compromising the king's favorite, the famous Madame de Pompadour... Jean-François Parot (born 1946) - historian, diplomat, writer, explorer of 18th-century Paris. The novel “The Mystery of the Rue Blanc-Manteau” is the first in a series of novels about the adventures of Nicolas Le Floche, Commissioner of the Chatelet.