Arguably the two periods of French history that have inspired the most lasting interest (and debate) are the Revolution that began in 1789 and what the French call les années noires, the "dark years" of 1940-44.

During this latter period, the French experienced a humiliating defeat at German hands; the Third Republic voted into existence a new regime (forever identified as "Vichy" after the spa town where it was based); the words "occupation," "collaborator," and "resistance" assumed painful and complex meanings; and, most historians agree, about 75,000 Jews were deported from France, mostly to Auschwitz. Only 2,500 ever returned.

For readers well read in French history, the name Louis Darquier – or Louis Darquier de Pellepoix, as he styled himself – may be familiar. From May 1942 to February 1944 Darquier headed Vichy's General Office for Jewish Affairs (Commissariat Général aux Questions Juives, or CGQJ).

He fled to Spain in 1944; two years before his death in 1980 he returned to public awareness when he gave an interview to the weekly L'Express, asserting that the concept of 6 million dead Jews was " 'an invention, pure and simple. A Jewish invention' ."

Beyond these broad outlines, Darquier is little remembered today. But Carmen Callil's magisterial Bad Faith: A Forgotten History of Family, Fatherland, and Vichy France may change that.

With astonishing detail and documentation (not to mention skill and style) Callil offers a biography of the man who took charge of "the Jewish problem" for the Nazis in France ("one of the few men to put on weight during the Second World War").

It also happens to be a story in which Callil has a personal stake. She became aware of Darquier through his daughter, Anne. Born in England in 1930, Anne Darquier seems to have spent only her first three months living with her parents; she was then "given away for a fee of £1 a week," placed in a nanny's care while Louis Darquier and Anne's Australian-born mother, Myrtle – who, along with Darquier, comes across as selfish, dishonest, and otherwise deeply flawed – sought fame and fortune, first in London and then in France.

Thus Anne grew up in England. She became a psychiatrist and the 20-something Callil was her patient for seven years. On Monday morning, Sept. 7, 1970, Callil arrived for her appointment and rang the doorbell, "but there was no response."

Later that day Anne was found dead on her bathroom floor. Although her death was ruled accidental, "the amount and the mixture of barbiturates and alcohol in her body were poisonous."

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