Critique du Publishers Weekly
The harsh, brutal winter world of Nazi-occupied Paris in 1943 is the setting for this grim procedural featuring Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo and Louis St-Cyr, a chief inspector of the Surêté. The German and the Frenchman form an unusual personal and professional partnership to fight "common" crime in a country where atrocities abound. A serial killer dubbed the "Sandman" has raped and killed four young girls. The fifth appears to be 11-year-old Nénette Vernet, orphaned heiress to an industrialist's fortune. But the body turns out to be that of her friend, and Nénette and her governess/companion are both missing. In an atmosphere reeking of menace and desperation, Kohler and St-Cyr search for the missing girls, for the Sandman and for the truth as they sift through tawdry affairs, back-street abortionists and whorehouses where even the used condoms are prized. The catalogue of suspects is nearly endless: a wounded SS officer who paints pictures of young girls; a pathetic nun and her sinful sister; a discredited priest; a clairvoyant and her loutish son. The humanity of Kohler and St.-Cyr, and their devotion to their task, transcends both the grimness of the crimes and the decadence of those thriving during the occupation. Harsh but addictive, this second in a series (which began with Stonekiller; reviewed in Forecasts, Feb. 24) is an acquired taste that lingers long after the last page is read. (Nov.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Critique de Kirkus
Four schoolgirls have already been murdered when Jean-Louis St-Cyr and his Gestapo colleague Hermann Kohler are called to occupied Paris to investigate a fifth. But this time the crime scene reveals subtle and disturbing differences that make them wonder if this crime was really the Sandman's work after all. The girl who died in a birdcage in the Bois de Boulogne was stabbed by a knitting needle, but by a different-sized needle, and stabbed in a different place, than the first four. Although she's wearing the disordered clothing of munitions heiress Nnette Vernet, the corpse is actually Nnette's friend Andre Noireau, orphaned when her parents went abroad on a visit to Coventry and never returned. As for Nnette herself, she might as well be orphaned, since she's caught not only in the European war but in the more intimate battle between her bullying father and her scheming mother. Perhaps that's why she's disappeared, along with her companion, university student Liline Chambert. Or perhaps her disappearance is connected to the traces of SS involvement--from the presence of the Kommandant of Paris in the birdcage within minutes of the murder to the commerce at a nearby Germans-only brothel to the vile paintings of a sentimental Attack Leader that St-Cyr and Kohler keep tripping over no matter how hard they try to overlook them. As elliptical and understated as any of Louis and Hermann's cases (Stonekiller, p. 592, etc.), though its crescendo of ugly secrets marks it as one of their most searching.
