An ambitious lawyer, a scandalous family secret, and a loan shark. Take these three elements and paint them onto a backdrop of upper-class Paris and you have Honore de Balzac's 'Gobseck'.The lawyer just happens to act for the loan shark, and he knows the secret that Anastasie de Restaud, who has married into the aristocracy, is having an affair and blowing her money on her lover.Which financial strings can the lawyer and loan shark pull? And who will be tied up by them?If you like Charles Dickens 'Bleak House' and Jane Austen's 'Pride and Prejudice', you will love this.Honoré de Balzac (1799-1850) was a French novelist and playwright, most famous for a sequence of novels, collectively called 'The Human Comedy'. His signature style was a warts-and-all representation of post-Napoleonic French life, rich in detail and featuring complex, unfiltered characters.The style means Balzac is regarded as one of the pioneers of European literary realism. He is named as an influence on writers including Emile Zola, Henry James, Charles Dickens, and Gustave Flaubert.The first novel he published under his own name was 'Les Chouans' in 1829. In 1834 he hit upon the idea of grouping his novels together to record all of society. The result, over a period of years, was 'The Human Comedy', which comprised three categories: 'Analytic Studies'; 'Philosophical Studies'; 'Studies of Manners'.