Séance Infernale

Book excerpt: Los Angeles, 2002. Alex Whitman is hired by an enigmatic collector to locate what could be the first movie ever made—Séance Infernale. Its creator, Augustin Sekuler, is considered by those in the know to be the true inventor of motion pictures—not the Lumière brothers or Thomas Edison. In 1890, Sekular had boarded a Paris-bound train from Dijon, days before he was to present to the world his greatest new invention: a moving picture machine. But he never arrived at Gare de Lyon. He and his moving picture machine vanished, never to be heard from again. When Whitman tracks down what could be fragments of Sekuler’s famously lost film, questions are raised—about Sekuler, about the fate of him and his invention, and about the film itself. And the stakes become ratcheted up as these riddles lead to a darker, far more dangerous mystery. At once riveting, atmospheric, and filled with vivid historical detail, Séance Infernale is a heart-pounding work of mystery and suspense.