Death in Amber

by Dean Fetzer

The Amber Room - a wondrous room made from panels of carved amber – a gift in the 18th Century to Peter the Great, Czar of Russia. Once part of a palace outside St Petersberg, this priceless treasure has been missing since the end of World War II. Removed from the palace by a Nazi art collection squad at the height of the war, the Amber Room was last seen in Königsbourg in late 1944 – it vanished without a trace. Now, someone knows where it has come to rest and will do anything to get it. Ninety years on and beautiful young women are being found dead with no evidence of why they died. Forensics has no clues and fewer answers. Haunted by a mysterious benefactress, Jaared Sen is hired by an old friend to find his missing niece. A Contractor for The Company, Jaared is the only one who can find her – and the Amber Room – before the killer strikes again.

Genres: Thriller, Suspense, Mystery

386 pages, Paperback

First published July 1, 2009

About the author

A keen lighting designer, Dean visited the Edinburgh Festival with a theatre company from the University of Colorado and then stayed for a year, spending most of his salary in pubs. After moving to London, he took up a career in graphic design and then web communications in the City before starting pub review website fancyapint.com with a friend. Editor of Fancyapint? in London and author of two Jaared Sen books, Dean lives in East London with his wife Debra and two cats, and dreams of a that house in France.

Reviews

[Theresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

The Amber Room's history has always fascinated me, so when I saw this novel, I knew I HAD to read it. I must say the beginning started out slow for me. There were a lot of characters introduced and the story jumped around. I was a bit confused, but as I plodded on, I found there were actually 2 story lines running side by side. When I figured that out, the placement of the characters came much more easily, and the whole thing became crystal clear. The way it written was really quite brilliant.

The story is full of mystery and suspense with a bit of sci-fi/fantasy to give it an interesting twist. It is action-packed and very exciting and kept me on the edge of my seat. With the twists and turns, I didn't really figure it all out until close to the end.

One of the main characters, Contractor Jaared Sen, was my favorite. He is a blind investigator who is not only smart, good looking, and very well trained, but he has a sense of humor. He's one that will bend the rules if he has to, and then face the consequences later.

Mr. Fetzer did a brilliant job keeping me on edge throughout the story. I really hope the decides to keep Contractor Sen alive and working on more cases in the future, as I can't get enough of this detective!

Parental note: Book contains violence, some offensive language, and sexual situations.

[Carol Kerry-Green · Rating 4 out of 5]

First in the Jaared Sen quartet where we meet the blind Contractor for the first time as he battles to find the niece of a friend and his mercenary friend Skeet before they turn up on the post mortem table of the medical examiner in London. There's a serial killer on the loose in this near future London, and it is Sen's job to track and find him before he kills anyone else. At the same time in a parrallel storyline, Pocock Woffe - Wolf to his friends and his 'family' Graeme and his daughter Shirl and Wolf's boyfriend Michael are trying to discover what happened to the Amber Room which was last seen during the 2nd world war when the Nazi's dismantled it. The two story lines are intertwined with Mr Euynomous a crime lord being involved in both stories. How Sen finds Skeet and how Wolf finds the Amber room makes for great reading, and then there's the mysterious Madeline, who or rather what is she?

[Kaitlyn Lindsay · Rating 3 out of 5]

Sometimes I think the whole "epic quest to find the missing historical artifact which was stolen by Nazis and disappeared after WWII, whilst being continually thwarted by a seemingly unrelated, yet totally connected to the main plot, villain" storyline should have its own genre, preferably with a name a bit more concise than the one I just gave. Well, that is the basic plot line of Death in Amber, but the fun part is that the artifact isn't a done to death artifact like the Holy Grail, but rather a room carved in Amber as a gift to Peter the Great of Russia. So bonus points were assigned to this book for not centering the plot around The Holy Grail, the Knights Templar or anything with the words DaVinci or Code...

To see the full review over at The Book Buff, click here: http://thebookbuff.blogspot.com/2010/...

-Kate the Book Buff

[Áine · Rating 5 out of 5]

If you liked Dan Brown's The Da Vinci code, then you will like this one with multiple mysteries - 2 for the price of one. The suspense held my interest and I am not accustomed to this genre.Several fascinating story lines run through the book simultaneously. The book alternates between and among them. At a couple of points the stories intersect and the myriad characters from one story meet the characters from another. I can recommend it to mystery and crime fans. You can satisfy your appetite for the supernatural, for conspiracy and sometimes, conspiratorial supernaturals who interact with an extraordinarily long-lived human (at least I think he is?) investigator. Follow the "Eighth Wonder of the World" on its meandering path from Catherine The Great's palace in St. Petersburg, to Nazi Germany and then - well, I cannot tell you. You'll have to read it to find out.