Mayhem: (1 St-Cyr and Kohler Mysteries)

A French inspector and Gestapo detective team up to fight crime in Nazi-occupied Paris during World War II: "The offbeat pair gel . . . fast and convincing" (The Oxford Times). Police inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr watches the German tanks roll into Paris from his office window. When Gestapo agents burst through his door, he is destroying confidential documents with the care that is his trademark. As the Nazis take control of the city, they allow St-Cyr to remain at his post, solving the everyday crimes which do not stop simply because there is a war on. He is assigned a partner, Bavarian detective Hermann Kohler, a bullish man who is as brutal as St-Cyr is refined. Though their politics differ, neither man is the sort to let a bad deed go unpunished. Today their work takes them to a suburban forest, where a well-dressed young man has been found murdered and stripped of identification. Nearby lies an expensive beaded silk purse. Although it appears to be a crime of passion, its roots lie in the savagery that wartime nurtures and occupation lets run free.

About the Author :
J. Robert Janes (b. 1935) is a mystery author best known for writing historical thrillers. Born in Toronto, he holds degrees in mining and geology, and worked as an engineer, university professor, and textbook author before he started writing fiction. He began his career as a novelist by writing young adult books, starting with The Odd-Lot Boys and the Tree-Fort War (1976). He wrote his last young adult novel, Murder in the Market, in 1985, by which time he had begun writing for adults, starting with the four-novel Richard Hagen series. In 1992, Janes published Mayhem, the first in the long-running St-Cyr and Kohler series for which he is best known. These police procedurals set in Nazi-occupied France have been praised for the author's attention to historical detail, as well as their swift-moving plots. The thirteenth in the series, Bellringer, was published in 2012.

Review :
"A funny and exciting book, beautifully documented." --Louis Malle, director of Elevator to the Gallows "A Sûreté man and a Gestapo officer combine to turn 1942 Paris the seamy side out . . . The offbeat pair gel . . . fast and convincing." --The Oxford Times "[Janes finds] details, both homely and sublime, that define life in an occupied nation in wartime." --The New York Times