Like Victor Hugo's dogged Javert, Jean Baylot, Prefect of Paris Police, was a policeman with one idea. The shootings, burglaries, thievery and other routine crimes he left to his staff to handle; the shadowy underworld which lies behind the beauty of Paris hardly knew his name. Baylot concentrated 16,000 policemen and his own single-minded will on hunting and harassing Communists. He was uncommonly effective: when Parisian Communists said the name of Jean Baylot, they spat.
When he took over in Paris in 1951, after a career as an anti-Communist trade union official...
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