Salamander

Well this was my first of this series. I will say that it took some adjustments. Yes it is not always clear who precisely is speaking and what about. Yes the phrases are repeated frequently but hey you ever speak to a frenchman in french??? Yes these two tendencies caused the book to be a bit of heavy reading through the middle half. Don't despair, as the final quarter gets going this technique makes sense. It had created drudgery and a grind that was equal to the protagonists. So when things get going the writer alters tactics and goes to a quite successful conclusion. I strongly encourage folks of a patient nature to give this a try.

Jean-Louis St. Cyr of the Surete and Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo make unusual partners in the fight against crime in WW II Occupied France. Two days before Chrstmas in 1942 in Lyon, France, a fire was set in a crowded cinema; 183 people died. The arsonist was known as the Salamander and had reputedly set fires in the summer of 1938 in Germany. Hermann's boss, The Sturmbannfuhrer, is under pressure from the Head of the Gestapo in Berlin to catch this arsonist. As Jean-Louis and Hermann sift through the wreckage of the theater and reconstruct lives for the corpses, they discover leads to railway workers, the Resistance, houses of prostitution, and the civic theater. Janes has the ability to transport the reader to the penetrating cold of a winter without fuel, a Christmas without feasting, and into the minds of people trying to survive. Jean-Louis and Hermann have forged a friendship in conflict. Salamander is the third in the series that I have read; each is better than the last.