Requirements: ePUB Reader, 1.75mb
Overview: Old Etonian once termed Damon Runyonesque because of articles on horse racing sent from Australia…always been fascinated by WWII and especially the complex French situation which exposed the best and the worst of human nature of the citizens in an occupied country. Research for books helped by living for 20 years in France where he worked for leading press agency Agence France Presse (AFP), a country that is still haunted by its past and for not having dealt with it properly because de Gaulle preferred to heal the wounds and create a myth of all round resistance save a few misguided bad eggs, a minority of whom paid the heaviest penalty.
Genre: Fiction > Mystery/Thriller
1. The Twisted Patriot
A rising star in Macmillan’s government in the 1950s, Minister of State for Defence, Sebastian Stuart, mysteriously disappears just weeks after being on trial for treason during the Second World War.
The trial brings Stuart face to face with his one-time best friend from Oxford days, Sir Adam Steiner QC, one of the top criminal lawyers in the country. Having betrayed Steiner as students by having an affair with Mirabelle, his beautiful girlfriend, Stuart now bears the brunt of Steiner’s calculated revenge.
Flashing back to their Oxford days and then edging forwards to span the Second World War period, the narrative reveals how Stuart set off to Berlin just as war is about to break out in Europe. With friends in the German aristocracy, he revels in fine dining and the company of woman, taking any opportunities which come his way to seek adventure and self-preservation above all.
But his past catches up with him …
Although played out in the public eye, the fight between Steiner and Stuart is an intense personal vendetta and the dramatic end will shatter both their worlds.
2. The Tortured Detective
1942. Paris is a city under occupation.
Detective Inspector Lafarge, a former prisoner of war, is sent to investigate the murder of the beautiful young film actress Marguerite Suchet. The man who has called upon him is the Vichy chief of police René Bousquet – who Lafarge despises.
The chief suspect is a lawyer and avowed anti-Nazi, Pierre-Yves de Chastelain. But is he only being targeted because of his run-ins with the law before the war broke out?
As Lafarge becomes increasingly repelled by his colleagues’ behaviour towards all those who oppose the Nazis, he must question the allegiances and loyalty of everyone around him…and ultimately his own as well.
3. The Compromised Detective
It’s August 1944 and the people of France are celebrating liberation from Nazi occupation – but a nasty hangover remains.
French men and women faced a stark choice in those dark days: to resist or to collaborate. Some, like Chief Inspector Gaston Lafarge, tried to keep a foot in both camps.
Lafarge, as a significant cog in the Vichy regime which worked with its German masters, believed he could still go about his business of investigating ordinary crime while his bosses plotted crimes that would stain the history of the proud country for decades to come – and also plot their downfall.
After committing a series of murders Lafarge attempts to flee the country in search of a new life with his Argentine wife and two children, but his bid ends with the sinking of their ship.
He is rescued and returns alone to Paris where he is permitted to resume his police duties at a time when the Free French leader General de Gaulle is returning from exile in London to take control of the country.
But reluctantly backed by the Americans, who give in to Winston Churchill’s persuasive powers, de Gaulle faces a new enemy from within – a right-wing group of pro-monarchists led by one Colonel Antoine de Cambedessus who long to restore the monarchy in the shape of Henri d’Orleans, the Comte de Paris, and descended from Louis-Philippe King of France from 1830-48.
Incredibly, Lafarge takes de Cambedessus’ wife Berenice as his lover – so their paths are already on a collision course …
4. The Haunted Detective
Paris might be liberated and the war at an end but a huge influx of returning refugees, concentration camp survivors and less savoury types who fought for or collaborated with the Nazis presents a whole swathe of problems for a hard-pressed government which is already struggling with food and power shortages.
There is also a thirst for vengeance – some taken on the street but also a set of trials in court for the major figures in the Vichy Government.
One of those is Lafarge’s father – the senior confidant of Marshal Petain – who is incarcerated in Fresnes prison with others from the disgraced regime.
Lafarge fears for his father’s life and along with his colourful step brother – who has returned on a train filled with POW’s – pays two guards to look out for him.
However, he is murdered and whilst Lafarge is warned by his superior to take a backseat on the investigation he is soon heavily involved as other murders appear to be linked to that of his father whilst the two prison guards disappear.
With the fear his own past crimes will be revealed and with his family a constant source of anxiety he finds solace in his love of cognac and becomes enmeshed in a sinister tale of betrayal and murder where no one appears above suspicion in a city that is a long way from emerging from its nightmare.
5. The Serpentine Detective
Ghosts of the past return to haunt Chief Inspector Gaston Lafarge – a cognac-loving detective who earned powerful enemies in the Vichy regime and the Resistance – just when he thought his life had at last settled down. Hal Rosenberg, whose life Lefarge saved in the round-up of the Jews in Paris in July 1942, has returned. Rosenberg, formerly an art gallery owner, is arrested for the murder of Otto Meissner, whom Rosenberg alleges worked with the Nazis. Lafarge believes his friend is innocent, however. Lafarge’s investigation is hindered by him also being subject to a contract on his life and that of his family. He suspects those behind it are former Vichy paladins like the ruthlessly ambitious former head of the police Rene Bousquet, who is in prison awaiting trial. Betrayal stalks him every step of the way as the trail to clear Rosenberg’s name leads Lafarge to Nuremberg and a potential unlikely saviour.
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Inspector Lafarge Omnibus #1-3 here: https://forum.mobilism.org/viewtopic.php?f=1294&t=2723329.
