Please join us on April 26th at 10:45 am EST for a discussion with authors Gayle K. Brunelle and Annette Finely-Crosswhite on their book Assassination in Vichy.  This discussion will take place at the Richmond West End Library, located at 5420 Patterson Avenue, Richmond, Virginia  23226.  Professor Finley-Crosswhite will be joining us in person and Professor Brunelle will be joining us via Zoom from France.  

During the night of 25 July 1941, assassins planted a time bomb in the bed of former French Interior Minister Marx Dormoy. The explosion on the following morning launched a two-year investigation that traced Dormoy’s murder to the highest echelons of the Vichy regime.  Domoy, who had led a 1937 investigation of the “Cagoule,” a violent right-wing terrorist organization, was the victim of a captivating revenge plot. Based on the meticulous
examination of tens of thousands of documents, Assassination in Vichy tells the story of Dormoy’s murder and the investigation that followed.
At the heart of this book lies a true crime that was sensational in its day. A microhistory that tells a larger and more significant story about the development of far-right political movements, domestic terrorism, and the importance of courage, Assassination in Vichy explores the impact of France’s deep political divisions, wartime choices, and post-war memory.  Assassination in Vichy was published in France in 2024 as L’Assassinat de Marx Dormoy:
Enquête sur la “Cagoule” by Nouveau Monde Éditions.

Gayle K. Brunelle, Ph.D.

Gayle K. Brunelle, Ph.D. is Professor Emeritus of History, California State University, Fullerton, and Editor-in-Chief of Terrae Incognitae: The Journal of the Society for the History of the Discoveries. She has authored numerous journal articles and chapters in edited collections, and five books, including, with Annette Finley-Croswhite, Murder in the Métro: Laetitia Toureaux and the Cagoule in 1930s France (2010) and Assassination in Vichy: Marx Dormoy and the Struggle for the Soul of France (2020). She is Editor of Volume Four of The Cultural History of Exploration series (Bloomsbury Press, 2024). Gayle is a member of a relatively rare breed—a native born Vermonter. Raised in Rutland Vermont, she attended St. Michael’s College in Colchester, Vermont where she earned her baccalaureate in history and then earned her M.A. and Ph.D. from Emory University in Atlanta, Georgia. It was at Emory that Gayle and Annette met and where they learned of their affinity for tales of mystery and crime. Eventually they became the best of friends and co-authors.
Gayle is retired now and lives with her French-Canadian husband in Carcassonne, France.

Annette Finley-Croswhite, Ph.D.

Annette Finley-Croswhite, Ph.D. is a Professor of History and “University Professor” at Old Dominion University (ODU). She is the author or co-author of four books and many articles and book chapters inclusive of L’Assassinat de Marx Dormoy: Enquête sur la Cagoule, 2024 (with
Gayle K. Brunelle). She has won a number of research grants and fellowships including a National Endowment for the Humanities Fellowship and a National Science Foundation ADVANCE Grant. At ODU she is the founding Director of the Center for Faculty Development.

Annette earned her baccalaureate degree in history with honors at the University of Richmond and her Ph.D. from Emory University. Throughout her life she had been interested in Poland and eventually she began taking students to Poland and France to study the Holocaust. In 2015 she was made a fellow of the Auschwitz Jewish Center in Oświęcim, the city where Auschwitz-Birkenau is located. She is currently working on a book that traces the life of Esther
Fersztenfeld, a Jewish girl born in Paris who died in the Holocaust. Annette lives in Norfolk with her husband who is also a graduate of the University of Richmond.  Drs. Brunelle and Finley-Croswhite write on a variety of subjects. They are both Frenchhistorians and have published works on the period of the wars of religion in the sixteenth-century. While Gayle is an expert on pre-modern merchant culture and the age of explorationand Annette publishes on the Holocaust, they both study right-wing extremism and terrorism in France in the twentieth century.

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