Carousel, J. Robert James (2.5)The premise of this book drew me in, but the execution was not as good as I had hoped. The book is a mystery set in occupied Paris during WWII. It is one, though not the first, of a series featuring an unusual pairing of a Gestapo agent and a French detective. The c...
Praise for the St-Cyr and Kohler series: Jean Louis St. Cyr and Hermann Kohler [are] remarkably charming sleuths. . . . Vivid studies of everyday life in an occupied land, each a portrait and still life couched in sym-pathy for the fellows of a defeated people.-The New York Times Book ReviewBeaut...
In a freezing Paris in 1942, St Cyr and Kohler are investigating a missing shipment of honey. A beekeeper in Belleville has been murdered; his widow has connections she would rather not go into; and the ramifications of the case stretch all the way to Switzerland and Stalingrad.
St-Cyr and Kohler are shipped out to Avignon to investigate the violent death of a young aristocrat: she was a singer aspiring to join the Madrigal group. Amidst a heady brew of sex, politics and professional jealousy, St-Cyr must discover the truth - with some help from the dead.
It's February 1943 and the famous old spa town of Vichy, France, has been closed for the duration of the German occupation, and all the grand hotels taken up by the Government of Marechal Petain. But corruption and murder reach into the highest levels. Detectives Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Koh...
Canadian writer J. Robert Janes's series of mysteries set in occupied France in 1942 are very popular in his native country and in England, and it's not hard to see why. Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler--an elegant, acerbic French policeman and a massive, lumbering, surprisingly compassionate...
"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. Th...
Kahn, Adèle. Rosenthal, Marcel. Radetski, Leah …’ Vernet had said Liline Chambert had often of late found his niece here in the Jewish section of the ancien Cimetière de Neuilly and, yes, Nénette had been absolutely right, thought Kohler grimly. It was indeed the quietest place on earth next to t...
Pathetic! Yes, that’s what it was. And all because of the curfew! And the gasolene and diesel fuel restrictions, of course. St-Cyr flung the cigarette butt away as he strode beneath the first of the colossal iron-and-glass pavilions that had once contained the heart and pulse of Paris and its env...
Nothing would suffice but that she immediately leave and go next door to tell Pierre-Alexandre that she couldn’t marry him. ‘Mademoiselle, that boy has to stop pestering me. I can’t have him coming here at all hours begging to know if you’ve returned. I’ve told him nothing...
Challenged at the gate, Kohler handed over the blanket pass and his papers, but Jakob Dorsche hadn’t come to meet him and that could only mean there had been trouble. ‘Einen Moment, bitte, Herr Hauptmann Detektiv Aufsichtsbeamter,’ grunted the Feldwebel. No youngster, he h...
Through the tall French windows of the kitchen, I could see the children outside and I wondered, as I have so often of late, whether I ought to take them to England. The Nazis were threatening war. First it was the Saarland, then Austria, then Czechoslovakia, and now Poland. Hitler wouldn’t stop....
Some were brushing their teeth or having an impromptu wash, others combing their hair or trying to sleep or hurriedly getting dressed, still others lighting the stoves or complaining about the smoke that filled the corridors at times for the pipes often ran along them. Unheated, the hotels would ...
I regret the necessity but …’ ‘But business is business, Inspector St-Cyr. Is that it?’ Ah nom de Dieu, had he struck a sensitive chord at last? ‘Madame, a childhood friend and employee is dead. Please, I must insist. I’ve a car waiting.’ A car … ‘Did she die in peace?’ What was the woman thinkin...
It sharpened the contrast of orange-tiled roofs in their jumble against the bleached grey-white of the ruined fortress perched on the summit. St-Cyr stood alone on that hillside. Frost was in the air. Smoke trailed thinly from the village. Goats foraged amid snow-dusted clumps of mimosa and junip...
‘Yes, thanks. Would you bring me a gin sling, the prawn soup followed by the smoked salmon and then a salad, please?’ ‘And for the main course?’ Gin at the supper table and she not English, Irish or from any of those parts. An American, was it? ‘The beef Wellington,1 I thi...
Each then evaporated into the blackout, the click-clack of the Occupation’s wooden-soled shoes earnestly retreating along the passage de la Trinité, a lane so narrow and old, water rushed down its centre finding the shoes first and sewers second. Rain, an icy, bone-numbing rain: Paris, Thursday 1...
The build was grim, the grip firm, and when Nana Thélème pulled the hammer back, it made two clicks, at half-cock and the full. She knew it was madness to have such a thing. The box had been wrapped in newspaper but tied with a red silk rose and left with the coat-check girl downstairs in the clu...