A Blood Red Morning
A Henri Lefort Mystery
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- $16.99
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- $16.99
Publisher Description
In this unputdownable WWII series, Paris detective Henri Lefort, must solve a complex case when a man is murdered on the policeman's own doorstep.
January 1941: It's cold and still dark when Paris Detective Henri Lefort wakes up to an empty apartment, irritated with his roommate for not even starting the coffee.
Irritation turns to suspicion when he starts his walk to work and spots a large blood stain in front of the building. At the office his boss, chief of homicide, is incredulous that Henri didn't hear the gunshot that killed a man right outside his apartment. On the plus side, this means that Henri isn't a witness and can investigate the case.
It first appears that the dead man is a nobody—but Henri soon finds out he's a nobody with a classified police file. Henri confronts his bosses and then the Germans, but is stonewalled. So he turns his investigation to the other tenants in his building. Coincidentally, each resident claims ignorance. When Henri learns that the dead man was a German agent, he must face the real possibility that one of his friends and neighbors is a killer. It's his job to find the truth no matter what, but when he does he faces the biggest dilemma of his career—whether in times like these the rules of justice should be, just sometimes, trumped by the rules of war.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Pryor's vivid third WWII-era whodunit featuring Henri Lefort (after The Dark Edge of Night) finds the French police detective investigating a crime that hits particularly close to home. After Lefort sleeps through a shooting on the doorstep of his Paris apartment building, he's assigned to investigate. The victim is Guy Remillon, a banker who lost his job when the Nazis took over the city and who then began working for the SS, investigating tips sent by French citizens hoping to have their neighbors arrested or fined. The work made Remillon a laundry list of enemies, but Lefort gets a strong lead when one of his neighbors reports seeing the building's busybody toss something out a window soon after the crime. However, when Lefort learns that a Nazi official removed a piece of paper from Remillon's belongings, he worries that investigating the murder with his usual diligence could put him in the crosshairs of the SS. Pryor generates nerve-shredding tension with Lefort's tightrope walk, and he streamlines the plotting more effectively than in the previous installment. This series merits a long run.
