This triptych of satisfying graphic novels is set in late Victorian Europe, in a world rich with steampunk gadgets and lingo. Telephone? No, "voicepipes." Robots? Try "Automatons." Humans? Servant class "Doughfaces." History is set on its head, with Britain having lost the Napoleonic wars to France. After a long occupation, Britain is independent, but Anglophobia, revolution and growing restlessness abound. Paris, now the capital of a French empire, is Grandville, and most of the action revolves around British and French imbroglios threatening the Pax Francia. Enter Detective LeBrock, the hard-bodied badger detective who travels with barbells, deploys Holmesian deductive reasoning and has a tragic past. He and his posh rat partner track down assassins, revolutionaries turned murderers and a cabal of wealthy industrialists led by a heinous toad plotting another war. You'll want to see the Badger beat the Toad for yourself in the third book, trust me. And the Grandville books are full of grimly funny set pieces — like a disheveled Snowy the dog, found in an opium den muttering about his Tin Tin adventures in a heroin-induced hallucination.
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