A strangled young woman, her room awash in blood, is only the beginning of the horrors that await SñretÇ Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr and his Gestapo watchdog Hermann Kohler (Mirage). Christianne Baudelaire, who was raped after death, is surrounded by two dozen forged Roman coins--one of them pressed into her forehead--and has a rubber-banded stuffed canary in her dresser drawer. Outside, there are two more corpses--those of a carousel operator roped to his own contraption, and a Gestapo corporal whose murder requires the taking of 30 hostages who'll be killed unless Louis and Hermann can follow a twisted trail of prostitution, collaboration, and family treachery reaching back 30 years. The mystery is ladled on generously--but Janes's perverse talent for mangling even the simplest expository scenes will discourage all but the hardiest fans of WW II intrigue.
