From Kirkus Reviews
Two days before Christmas 1942, some 450 citizens of Lyon crowd into the local cinema to watch La Bte humainea little proletarian crime drama to take their minds off the war. And before the film is over, a fire has claimed the lives of 183 of them. Visiting fire chief Karl Johann Weidling tells the investigating officers called in from Paris, the Surts Jean-Louis St-Cyr and the Gestapo's Hermann Kohler, that the fire has all the earmarks of the work of the Salamander, who set three smaller blazes in prewar Germany before hitting the jackpot in Lyon. Despite the horrifying numbers of the deadincluding the bishop's personal secretary, a priest adorned with a suspiciously valuable bejewelled crossKohler and St-Cyr are drawn to three other casualties who weren't even in the theater: Madeleine Aurelle, found dead in the apartment behind the theater; and Claudine Bertrand and her mother, gassed in La Belle poque, the neighboring brothel. It's Claudine, in fact, whose ``very special'' perversion holds the key to the case. But each of the leading suspects, as in Janes's three previous Occupation mysteries (Sandman, 1997, etc.), has close enough ties to sinister higher powers--in this case, to Klaus Barbie, of the Hotel Terminus--to keep the atmosphere alternately ablaze and achill. The most brilliantly unsettling of this fine series to date. -- Copyright ©1998, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.
Review
“The most brilliantly unsettling of this fine series to date.” —Kirkus Reviews “In scene after vivid scene detailing the humiliations and deprivations of everyday existence in Vichy France, [St-Cyr and Kohler] also mourn the degradation of humanity—as much as the loss of life.” —The New York Times “Gritty, gruesome, and entirely captivating . . . An exceedingly clever novel that should appeal to World War II buffs as well as mystery readers.” —Booklist
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.
