Mayhem

Rating:
Summary: A good book
Review: As I am always on the lookout for historically-set novels, I stumbled across this book. The concept, setting and descriptions in this book are 5-star. The plot carries through much of the book but loses a little steam at the end. This is not Tom Clancy, but who wants to read that garbage anyway? I look forward to reading the remaining books in this series.

Rating:
Summary: An interesting concept
Review: I picked up this book thinking that the idea of a Gestapo investigator teamed with a French Surete officer investigating a murder during the occupation of France in WWII was an interesting idea. It was, but the book was confusing and unfocused. Hopefully others in the series will be better written.

Rating:
Summary: Murder in 1942 Nazi occupied Paris
Review: Mayhem, originally published as Mirage in the United States, is the beginning chapter of the continuing series of an unusual partnership in an unusual time. It is December 1942, in Nazi occupied Paris. Our heroes, Jean-Louis St Cyr of the Surete and Herman Kohler of the Gestapo, are called to a rural area near the Fontaineblue forest where the body of an attractive young man was discovered. The Nazis suspect the crime to be Resistance related and want it solved speedily or threaten to send our Herman to the Russian Front. Our detective pair discovers that clandestine sex, family secrets, and greed are the motives rather than the assumed patriotism. This series has been a favorite of mine. Janes's descriptions of the culture of scarcity in everyday Paris and in the historically accurate scenes of Parisians coping with the defeat are so vivid that the reader feels the cold, the hunger, and the dark. However, this particular novel fails to work as well as the sequels. Try a later book in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Murder in 1942 Nazi occupied Paris
Review: Mayhem, originally published as Mirage in the United States, is the beginning chapter of the continuing series of an unusual partnership in an unusual time. It is December 1942, in Nazi occupied Paris. Our heroes, Jean-Louis St Cyr of the Surete and Herman Kohler of the Gestapo, are called to a rural area near the Fontaineblue forest where the body of an attractive young man was discovered. The Nazis suspect the crime to be Resistance related and want it solved speedily or threaten to send our Herman to the Russian Front. Our detective pair discovers that clandestine sex, family secrets, and greed are the motives rather than the assumed patriotism. This series has been a favorite of mine. Janes's descriptions of the culture of scarcity in everyday Paris and in the historically accurate scenes of Parisians coping with the defeat are so vivid that the reader feels the cold, the hunger, and the dark. However, this particular novel fails to work as well as the sequels. Try a later book in the series.