A kept woman's murder leads detectives St-Cyr and Kohler to the upper crust of occupied ParisIt is December 1942, and the Parisian Gestapo agents pass their days by executing dissidents and plotting the destruction of the Resistance. Homicide detectives Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler, meanwhile, must make do solving the gritty crimes with which the Nazi elite do not bother. Just hours after they learn that St-Cyr's wife and child have died, the partners confront an ugly murder that turns out to be very glamorous indeed.In a pay-by-the-hour hotel, a young woman is found surrounded by counterfeit coins and an ocean of blood. Her ID says she is an art student, but the quality of her clothes tell St-Cyr that she must be the mistress of a very rich man. The girl's killer is powerful, and guilty of much worse than murder."The unorthodox detective partners in a haunting wartime series by J. Robert Janes make compassion their business. St-Cyr of the Sûreté Nationale and...

A high-ranking German sailor is accused of petty, brutal murderAs Allied bombers rain death on the German submarine pens of occupied France, police inspectors Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler stumble through the darkness to a crime scene. A shopkeeper lies dead, head bashed in with a railway tie, surrounded by fragments of a shattered porcelain doll. It appears to be an open-and-shut case, which would make the detectives' job simple if the obvious suspect weren't a decorated U-Boat commander.Feared by the British, beloved by his crew, Kapitän Kaestner is a killer with a hobby: the manufacture of high-quality dolls. Before World War I ruined their business, generations of Kaestners produced the finest dolls on the continent. The shopkeeper's death comes not long after he and Kaestner fail to revive the dollmaking trade. Now, shrouded by a blackout, St-Cyr and Kohler begin the unenviable task of pinning a murder on the pride of the German fleet.

A woman is found butchered not far from an archaeological siteIn the woods of the Dordogne, farmers and their pigs hunt the forest floor for truffles. It is June 1942, and one such farmer has found something unusual: the postmaster's wife, murdered and left to rot beneath the trees. By the time police inspectors Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler arrive from Paris, she has been dead four days, and the flies have begun to feast. As Kohler combs the area, finding a picnic basket, two bottles of Champagne, and a collection of poisonous mushrooms, St-Cyr turns the body on its back. The woman has been mutilated, hacked to pieces by a blunt ax.She died steps from the famous Lascaux caves, an invaluable archaeological site that has attracted the Führer's attention. The SS is about to descend on the area, a film crew in tow, confounding the investigation as they swarm like the flies on the postmaster's wife.

A woman is brutally murdered in Avignon's Papal PalaceSix hundred years before the Germans conquered Paris, the pope came to Avignon to rule the Roman Church from afar. In January 1943, Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler visit the former Papal Palace—not as tourists, but as detectives. Where once the pope spoke to God, a woman has had her throat cut.Her corpse seems to have appeared from out of the past. Despite the strictures of wartime rationing, she died in finery, costumed in the ermine and silk of a Renaissance courtier. She appears to have been killed with a scythe, pulled across her neck in one swift stroke, like a shepherd slaughtering a sheep. Wartime Avignon is a small city, steeped in the jealousy that occupation encourages. As St-Cyr and Kohler dig into the city's past, they find motives for murder that predate the Nazis by centuries.

A young girl vanishes, leaving nothing behind but a pile of nude photosSince the Germans occupied Paris, police inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr has not been able to work a murder, robbery, or arson case without his German overlords demanding he work faster. His partner, Bavarian detective Hermann Kohler, does not share the sadism of many of his Gestapo colleagues, but he, too, has an obsession with speed. Their latest case calls for a sprint. For if they don't work quickly, a girl will die.Joanne was a neighbor of St-Cyr's who answered a modeling ad and never came home. By the time St-Cyr and Kohler break down the door of the supposed agency, all that remains are snapshots of Joanne and others posing naked at gunpoint. Complicating their search is a massive bank robbery perpetrated the day Joanne disappeared. If they can find the connection between the two crimes, the girl will be safe—or at least as safe as a Parisian can be in the winter of 1942.

In the dead of winter, a serial killer targets the children of ParisIt is January 1943, and as Germany reels from the defeat at Stalingrad, Hermann Kohler learns that his sons were among the German casualties. He has no choice but to set grief aside and continue working, solving everyday cases in and around Paris. Today he and his partner, Jean-Louis St-Cyr, examine the corpse of a murdered girl. As St-Cyr examines the crime scene, Kohler is overwhelmed; after seeing countless corpses, he can no longer stand it.This slender schoolgirl is the fifth victim of the serial killer named Sandman. Like the others, she was stabbed to death with a knitting needle and left in plain sight—in this case, in a birdcage in the Bois de Boulogne. Kohler can do nothing for this girl or for his own sons, but for the sake of France's children, he will send Sandman to the guillotine.

In the wake of World War II, a Frenchwoman learns to live for vengeanceIn Geneva, a frail young woman sits down in a caf . On her arm is a tattooed number—a souvenir from her time in Bergen-Belsen. As far as the French government is concerned, she is a dead woman, a casualty of the concentration camps. But after a narrow escape, Lily de St-Germain is back, and ready to take revenge on everyone who buried her. When the war started, Lily fled the countryside for Paris, hoping to convince her husband to abandon his work at the Louvre and help get their children to safety in England. There she found him in the arms of her sister, a betrayal that pushed her into the ranks of the R sistance—that fearful band of partisans who taught her to kill, and forced her to survive. The war may end in 1945, but Lily's battle will have only just begun.

In a resort town turned internment camp, a female prisoner is brutally murderedBefore the war, the hotels of Vittel hosted the wealthiest members of French society. Now, in the winter of 1943, two of France's most luxurious resorts have been converted into an internment camp for British and American women who failed to escape the country when the German army stormed across the border. For two years, the prisoners have lived quietly, surviving on Red Cross aid packages, but now they are beginning to die.An American woman is found stabbed through the heart with a pitchfork. By the time inspectors Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler arrive from Paris, rigor mortis and the February frost have frozen her solid. In her pockets are Cracker Jacks and Hershey bars—bribes intended for one of the guards. To bring justice to Vittel, St-Cyr and Kohler will have to unravel the conspiracy that is at the heart of this luxurious, elegant hell.