and "Of all the special assignments that Gerard de Montclaire accepted from the Minister of Justice, I remember none so strange and dangerous as the affair that took us to a lonely part of France in the autumn of 1907 and " So begins a letter that the late Colonel Sir Francis FitzMaurice wrote to a friend many years after the affair of and "The Beast Reborn and " - a puzzling case that tested both the intellect and the sangfroid of France's greatest detective of the Belle Epoque and which would have been worthy of his rival, the great Sherlock Holmes himself. There have been six grisly killing, the victims horribly ripped and torn and most with the bones of their necks crushed. The national newspapers are full of suggestions that a werewolf - le loup-garou - is once more loose in the Gevaudan. The Government's opposition and Church leaders, meanwhile, are raising a storm of protests that God was punishing France for turning its back on Him. Montclaire and Fitz soon take up the hunt for a wanton killer, who stalks the mountains around a small village and a lonely monastery. They uncover a madness that is even stranger than ancient superstitions.