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St. Cyr & Kohler #10
Madrigal
St-Cyr and Kohler are shipped out to Avignon to investigate the violent death of a young aristocrat: she was a singer aspiring to join the Madrigal group. Amidst a heady brew of sex, politics and professional jealousy, St-Cyr must discover the truth - with some help from the dead.
276 pages, Mass Market Paperback
First published January 1, 1999
35 people are currently reading
57 people want to read
About the author
J. Robert Janes
32 books20 followersJ. Robert Janes is a mystery author best known for writing historical thrillers. Born in Toronto, he holds degrees in mining and geology, and worked as an engineer, university professor, and textbook author before he began writing fiction. In 1992, Janes published Mayhem, the first in the long-running St-Cyr and Kohler series for which he is best known. These police procedurals set in Nazi-occupied France have been praised for the author’s attention to historical detail, as well as their swift-moving plots.
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Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews
July 15, 2018
A muddled tale. Most of the narrative relies on dialogue by the characters, major and minor. But thoughts are presented with spoken words, and they are sometimes contradictory. Also, in the Kindle edition at least, spoken wors are set off by single quotation marks that can be missed when reading rapidly. Setting and architectural details are important to the story, and the details are sometimes hard to grasp. Finally, there are many details of 14th century fashion, music, and belief that are easy to confuse. I wanted to like this, but kept losing the thread.
September 25, 2016
Ah, reading this tenth St-Cyr and Kohler novel after a gap of several months feels like welcoming back two familiar old friends. You simply cannot beat this series for atmosphere, Janes' believable recreation of the difficult period of the German occupation of France.
The timeline has now reached late January 1943 and the tide of war has definitely turned against Hitler's forces, with news of disaster at Stalingrad giving renewed hope of eventual liberation for the French. Our two detectives have been sent to investigate murder in Avignon, a case they suspect intended to get rid of them, their Gestapo masters using the strengthening resistance movement to dispose of the troublesome pair.
As usual the main point of interest with the book is the relationship between St-Cyr and Kohler, how they work together in odd but perfect harmony to tease out the threads of a complicated case in difficult circumstances. Relationships, too, between the French and the Germans, whether Resistance, Collaborators or, like most ordinary people, just trying to survive, to avoid forced labour service, to support their families. And how existing power structures were used by the Occupiers to maintain order and control.
The murder of a beautiful young woman discovered dressed like a Renaissance damsel, with horrific injuries, seems tied to the earlier apparent drowning of another girl, both part of a madrigal group. There's the local commandant's wife, badly burned and horrifically scarred in an Allied bombing attack on Cologne, who knew both victims and has information pertinent to the case but her husband won't permit her cooperation. Some influential locals have been exploiting the circumstances of the occupation to enrich themselves, buying up properties abandoned in the flight of the wealthy, including vineyards and artworks. Meanwhile, rations for ordinary citizens are 1,100 calories per day, if you can get what little is available, and that involves hours standing in a queue from pre-dawn. Those who can afford it pay others to stand in line. So hardships are far from evenly shared.
I will update when done.
Not finished yet but I have to comment on the eye-rolling scene in which Kohler conducts n interrogation of two young women in a bath (one of those big ones you can swim in practically). While asking questions of them they obligingly soap his back, and so on. That this scenario is remotely believable testifies to the strength of Janes' character building. Still it makes me laugh. Male wish fulfilment fantasy. Haha!
Finished the book earlier today. The St-Cyr and Kohler novels have become one of my favourite historical crime series. I read for character, atmosphere, strong sense of time and place, more than a clever mystery but if you want a challenge in that regard (trying to solve a puzzle) then the books deliver that, too, if you can disentangle the labyrinthine threads. And what a rich tapestry Madrigal is. I am not going to try to explain the complicated crime plot...to be honest, I didn't understand how the pieces all fit together, what with Renaissance music, costume and symbolism...astrology...La Cagoule ( right wing revolutionary action group), Resistance, Milice (Vichy collaborationist paramilitary organisation)...tormented Catholic priests...the 'Babylonian captivity' of the papacy in Avignon...the murky, dangerous, morally compromised circumstances of Occupied France, our harassed detectives engaged in solving murder mysteries for a regime responsible for mass killing.
I would love to see a television adaptation of these books. Recommended to all students of human nature and moral complexity.
The timeline has now reached late January 1943 and the tide of war has definitely turned against Hitler's forces, with news of disaster at Stalingrad giving renewed hope of eventual liberation for the French. Our two detectives have been sent to investigate murder in Avignon, a case they suspect intended to get rid of them, their Gestapo masters using the strengthening resistance movement to dispose of the troublesome pair.
As usual the main point of interest with the book is the relationship between St-Cyr and Kohler, how they work together in odd but perfect harmony to tease out the threads of a complicated case in difficult circumstances. Relationships, too, between the French and the Germans, whether Resistance, Collaborators or, like most ordinary people, just trying to survive, to avoid forced labour service, to support their families. And how existing power structures were used by the Occupiers to maintain order and control.
The murder of a beautiful young woman discovered dressed like a Renaissance damsel, with horrific injuries, seems tied to the earlier apparent drowning of another girl, both part of a madrigal group. There's the local commandant's wife, badly burned and horrifically scarred in an Allied bombing attack on Cologne, who knew both victims and has information pertinent to the case but her husband won't permit her cooperation. Some influential locals have been exploiting the circumstances of the occupation to enrich themselves, buying up properties abandoned in the flight of the wealthy, including vineyards and artworks. Meanwhile, rations for ordinary citizens are 1,100 calories per day, if you can get what little is available, and that involves hours standing in a queue from pre-dawn. Those who can afford it pay others to stand in line. So hardships are far from evenly shared.
I will update when done.
Not finished yet but I have to comment on the eye-rolling scene in which Kohler conducts n interrogation of two young women in a bath (one of those big ones you can swim in practically). While asking questions of them they obligingly soap his back, and so on. That this scenario is remotely believable testifies to the strength of Janes' character building. Still it makes me laugh. Male wish fulfilment fantasy. Haha!
Finished the book earlier today. The St-Cyr and Kohler novels have become one of my favourite historical crime series. I read for character, atmosphere, strong sense of time and place, more than a clever mystery but if you want a challenge in that regard (trying to solve a puzzle) then the books deliver that, too, if you can disentangle the labyrinthine threads. And what a rich tapestry Madrigal is. I am not going to try to explain the complicated crime plot...to be honest, I didn't understand how the pieces all fit together, what with Renaissance music, costume and symbolism...astrology...La Cagoule ( right wing revolutionary action group), Resistance, Milice (Vichy collaborationist paramilitary organisation)...tormented Catholic priests...the 'Babylonian captivity' of the papacy in Avignon...the murky, dangerous, morally compromised circumstances of Occupied France, our harassed detectives engaged in solving murder mysteries for a regime responsible for mass killing.
I would love to see a television adaptation of these books. Recommended to all students of human nature and moral complexity.
April 21, 2021
The plot in this book is tedious and nearly all of the characters are terrible people, so there's not really anyone to root for, except St Cyr and Kohler, of course.
Displaying 1 - 3 of 3 reviews