Occupied France, 1942. The apparently accidental death of a pointedly anonymous young man in Fontainebleau Forest brings together an improbable pair of investigators: Gestapo Officer Hermann Kohler and Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the SñretÇ. Under threats of reassignment and deportation by blustering Gestapo General Ackermann, the pair uses a handful of clues--a beaded purse found near the body, a single woman's footprint in the snow--to trace the victim's ties to the fashionable nightclub Mirage, and, through fabled chanteuse Gabrielle Arcuri, to the landed, troubled ThÇriault family and the not-so-holy Abbey of St. Gregory. As if sex, money, and religion weren't enough, Kohler and St- Cyr are menaced at every turn by both the Gestapo and the Resistance- -and by revelations that lead straight to Ackermann himself. Everything but the kitchen sink, with enough climaxes to satisfy Shere Hite. It's hard to imagine what Janes (The Alice Factor, etc.) is leaving over for the projected series starring Kohler and St-Cyr.
