"In spite of the war and the conqueror-conquered relationship, they had got on since the fall of 1940. Two detectives of long standing. None of the Gestapo-SS brutality and sadism for them. Just robbery, arson, murder, extortion, other things also, and much trouble with the SS and the Gestapo. These days so many got in the way." Among the people getting in the way of Inspectors Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the French Surete and Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo in this fourth installment of Canadian author J. Robert Janes's memorable series is top Nazi Hermann Goering. Goering's in Paris on an art-looting mission that crosses paths with an investigation by Kohler and St-Cyr into the murders of several young women who answered an ad to become fashion models. Ghosts of wars past and present haunt the story: one of the suspects is a "drooler," an aristocrat badly mutilated in World War One; and Kohler's two sons are involved in the ongoing siege of Stalingrad.
It's impossible to praise too highly the subtle ways in which Janes shows the twisted idiocy of the times through the lives of his two cops. St-Cyr (his family destroyed in a bomb blast) lives with a singer who has Resistance ties. But this most patriotic of Frenchmen faces death from a strengthened Resistance because of his perceived collaboration with the German occupiers. Kohler supports and protects two French women, and thereby puts them in danger. Always at odds with his Gestapo superiors, Kohler also needs their help in his investigations. When he faces down Goering at an art auction, it seems as much an act of suicidal madness as one of moral strength.
Mannequin begins just as the equally impressive Salamander ends. Along with Sandman and Stonekiller, they form a quartet as resonant as any ever written about a world at war. --Dick Adler
The fourth Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler mystery (immediately following the events chronicled in Salamander ) is, like its predecessors, an unsettling, gritty thriller set during the last years of World War II. St-Cyr is a member of the French Surete; Kohler is with the German Gestapo. Together, these two men who should be enemies investigate crimes of shocking brutality--here, several young girls have been abducted and murdered, and St-Cyr and Kohler are desperate to find the killer (or killers) before another beautiful young woman becomes a victim. Janes has found a can't-miss gimmick--a kind of odd-couple partnership taken to its most extreme--but he works hard at making each novel fresh. Each time around, readers learn a little more about the relationship between the two detectives and about the tension-filled climate of German-occupied France. Each novel is not just a top-notch mystery but also a trip into history. Fans of the previous St-Cyr/Kohler mysteries dare not miss this one. David Pitt
Review
“Janes devises a shocking solution to the brutal crimes at hand, but his larger point about the complexities of human guilt isn’t so easy to close the book on.” —The New York Times “Well researched and powerfully written.” —Historical Novels Review “Janes offers a searing picture . . . of the German Occupation and, in his two protagonists, a believable bonding of improbable allies.” —Publishers Weekly
About the Author
J. Robert Janes (b. 1935) is a mystery author best known for writing historical thrillers. Born in Toronto, he holds degrees in mining and geology, and worked as an engineer, university professor, and textbook author before he started writing fiction. He began his career as a novelist by writing young adult books, starting with The Odd-Lot Boys and the Tree-Fort War (1976). He wrote his last young adult novel, Murder in the Market, in 1985, by which time he had begun writing for adults, starting with the four-novel Richard Hagen series. In 1992, Janes published Mayhem, the first in the long-running St-Cyr and Kohler series for which he is best known. These police procedurals set in Nazi-occupied France have been praised for the author’s attention to historical detail, as well as their swift-moving plots. The thirteenth in the series, Bellringer, was published in 2012.
