Henri Lafont was a petty criminal who became the most powerful crook in Paris thanks to the Nazi occupation of France. A chance encounter in a prison camp led to a life of luxury running a ruthless mob of gangsters who looted the city on behalf of the Nazis who recognised Lafont's talent for treachery and deceit. Lafont recruited 'the French Gestapo', a motley band of sadistic grotesques that included faded celebrities, ex-footballers, pimps, murderers, burglars and bank robbers. They wore the best clothes, ate at the best restaurants, and did whatever they pleased. They lived on the exclusive rue Lauriston where they mixed with celebrities and Nazi officers, while down in the cellar of their building, the rest of the gang tortured resistance prisoners. Then the Allies came, and a terrible price had to be paid.

Autorentext

Christopher Othen is a writer and former legal representative to asylum seekers. He is the author of Franco's International Brigades: Adventurers, Fascists, and Christian Crusaders in the Spanish Civil War, Katanga 1960-63: Mercenaries, Spies, and the African Nation that Waged War on the World, Lost Lions of Judah: Haile Selassie's Mongrel Foreign Legion and Soldiers of a Different God: How the Counter-Jihad Created Mayhem, Murder, and the Trump Presidency.

Klappentext

By 1943, Henri Lafont was the most powerful Frenchman in occupied Paris. Once a petty criminal running from the French police, when he found himself recruited by the Nazis his life changed for ever.

Lafont established a motley band of sadistic oddballs that became known as the French Gestapo and included ex-footballers, faded aristocrats, pimps, murderers and thieves. The gang wore the finest clothes, ate at the best restaurants and threw parties for the rich and famous out of their headquarters on the exclusive rue Lauriston.

In this vivid portrait, Christopher Othen explores how Lafont and his criminal clan rampaged across Paris through the Second World War - until the Allies liberated France, and a terrible price had to be paid.