Carnival
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- $7.99
Publisher Description
Amid the ruins of an abandoned Alsatian carnival, St-Cyr and Kohler investigate a pair of suspicious suicides
During the Great War, Hermann Kohler and Jean-Louis St-Cyr fought in Alsace on opposite sides of the barbed wire. Two decades later, they return as partners: a Gestapo officer and a French cop investigating everyday crimes in a world gone mad with war. In February 1943, Alsace is unrecognizable—an occupied country where speaking French is all it takes to lose one’s freedom. St-Cyr and Kohler have been summoned to a POW camp where soldiers and résistants manufacture textiles on the grounds of a deserted carnival. Where industry and warfare overlap, they will find a conspiracy worthy of the most twisted house of mirrors.
Two prisoners of this garish, decrepit circus have killed themselves, and the jailers must at least make a show of finding out why. Although the trenches of the Great War are long gone, St-Cyr and Kohler find that in Alsace, the fires of battle smolder still.
PUBLISHERS WEEKLY
Set in 1943, Janes's cleverly structured 15th mystery featuring the French S ret 's Jean-Louis St.-Cyr and the Gestapo's Hermann Kohler (after 2013's Tapestry) takes the unlikely sleuthing pair to Alsace, where questions have been raised about two suicides in less than a week. The victims are connected with a rayon factory operated by one of Kohler's former superiors during WWI, Kommandant Rasche. One, Ren e Ekkehard, was Rasche's secretary, and the other, Eug ne Thomas, was the French prisoner placed in charge of the factory's laboratory. Naturally, the story behind the deaths and what led to them is complicated, and Janes does his usual solid job of crafting a puzzle that requires his detectives to employ their acumen. But, as in previous books, the strength lies in the successful presentation of the moral dilemmas that the leads face in attempting to work honestly in the midst of horrific crimes against humanity.
