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 Think You Know Who The Bad Guys Are In World War II France? Think Again By Emil Franzi Stone Killer, by J. Robert Janes (Soho Press). Cloth, $22. THIS IS A strange, offbeat, yet compelling murder mystery-cop yarn. Janes is a Canadian author, and Stone Killer is the seventh novel in a series featuring the most unlikely partners--a German Gestapo agent and a Vichy French police officer working together in the unoccupied portion of France in 1942.
But the question Janes poses and answers is simple: How did normal policeman investigate and handle normal crimes and criminals during those otherwise abnormal times? Throw in some 1940s forensics, St. Cyr's interest in prehistory (obviously a subject of interest to the geologist author), and a major propaganda attempt by the fictitious Nazi hierarchy to use the cave in a movie, and you have a totally unique murder mystery.
Janes has some habits that are a bit annoying, like having both
his detectives constantly hissing "merde"; and at times
the story moves a bit too fast and becomes confusing. But its
sheer originality of time, place, and character neutralize its
weak points, and almost place it in a sub-genre by itself. The
style is much more "European" than we're used to. In
a way, it's reminiscent of Humberto Eco's medieval detective stories
about murder in another time and place; but Janes' is shorter
and far less convoluted. Fans of whodunits should give it a read.
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Kohler and St. Cyr, the two heroes, are trying to find the vicious
killer of a middle-aged French woman whose mutilated body was
found near a prehistoric cave she and her husband, missing in
World War I, had discovered. Janes weaves a number of contemporary
characters--both French and German--into the story, and describes
what life was like in then-unoccupied France: Once wealthy Parisians
writing their country relatives and asking them to send food;
the bureaucratic authoritarianism that effected even the most
mundane details of everyday life under the Nazis; and the Nazi's
collaboration with a great number of the French citizenry are
part of the fascinating framework of this unconventional crime
story.
Janes paints the German Gestapo agent Kohler as a sympathetic
character simply trying to do his job in an environment he neither
chose nor likes, a move which adds yet another layer to a reasonably
complex tale. Janes also does a fine job of describing both the
geography and lifestyle of provincial France--the Perigord region,
home of Talleyrand--during this period. Interesting that he never
mentions Talleyrand, probably the most important Frenchmen to
come from this area.
