Books: Blood & Wax

I, MADAME TUSSAUD (370 pp.)—Sylvia Martin—Harper ($3.95).

No sooner had the guillotine decapitated King Louis XVI than an official seized the head by the hair and hurried it to Anne Marie Grosholtz who. after signing a receipt for it, laid it in her lap and began covering the warm features with plaster. In this way, Anne Marie (better known by her married name of Madame Tussaud) made death masks of many an old acquaintance and patron, including Marie Antoinette, Princess Elizabeth of France (whose lady attendant she had been), Danton and Robespierre. She...