Salamander

Rating:
Summary: Surete-Gestapo fight WW II crime
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: Great Concept, Mediocre Execution
Review: This is the ninth book in the Canadian author's series set in occupied France, featuring a detecting duo of one German Gestapo agent, and one French Sureté officer. I love the concept, but the mystery--set in Lyon, a few days before Christmas in 1942--is a confusing mess involving way too many characters and bizarre motivations. Also, the author's style of preceding a character's dialogue with their interior thoughts gets annoying and intrusive. All in all, the book was not satisfying, and didn't tempt me to seek out the others in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Great Concept, Mediocre Execution
Review: This is the ninth book in the Canadian author's series set in occupied France, featuring a detecting duo of one German Gestapo agent, and one French Sureté officer. I love the concept, but the mystery--set in Lyon, a few days before Christmas in 1942--is a confusing mess involving way too many characters and bizarre motivations. Also, the author's style of preceding a character's dialogue with their interior thoughts gets annoying and intrusive. All in all, the book was not satisfying, and didn't tempt me to seek out the others in the series.

Rating:
Summary: Starts great, bogs down, and sprints to the end
Review: 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.

Rating:
Summary: The Big Confusion
Review: Well, I read it to the end, but this was a hard piece of work! The story is pretty weird and so is the style of Mr Janes. You never know who's talking or who's thinking what. There are way too many characters introduced - Kohler and St Cyr are confused most of the time and after a few pages the reader's in the same situation. But at least St Cyr makes the right remark about all this on almost every page: "merde".