BELLRINGER

In 1943 the French resort town of Vittel has become an internment camp for British and American women who failed to escape the country when the German army stormed across the border. When an American prisoner is brutally murdered, Insectors Jean-Louis-St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler arrive from Paris to unravel the conspiracy that is at the heart of this luxurious, elegant hell.

It's German-occupied France during the Second World War. Two honest detectives, one from each side of that war, fight common crime in an age of officially sanctioned crime on a horrendous scale. Gangsters have been let out of jail and put to work by the Gestapo and SS; collaborators welcome the Occupier and line their pockets; ordinary citizens struggle to survive; inflation hits 165% while wages are frozen at 1939 levels; but most of all, German servicemen come on leave to Paris, ‘our friends' to some, ‘the Green Beans' to others, the ‘Schlocks, the Boche'. Paris, unlike all other cities and towns in war-torn Europe, is an open city, a showcase Hitler uses to let his boys know how good things can be under Nazi rule. French Gestapo are everywhere and definitely don't like our detectives since St-Cyr put so many of them away before the war. Hated and reviled by the Occupier and often by the Occupied, the two constantly tread a minefield. Paris is home territory but since they are the only two honest cops in all of France, they are sent throughout the country.We see aspects of the Occupation from different perspectives, yet everywhere there is the nightly ink of the blackout and the nail-down of the curfew. Muggings, rapes, purse-snatchings, murders, break-ins, prostitution, juvenile delinquency and acts of outright vandalism abound. It's blackout crime-time. Janes has published 17 adult novels, five mystery novels for young adults, and textbooks on geology. His series of mysteries set in Occupied France during World War II and featuring Chief Inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Sûreté and Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo, are his most popular works and have been critically acclaimed by The Wall Street Journal, amongst others, for their historical accuracy. The U.S.-based Western Society for French History used Janes' writings as a study of the convergence of fiction with history.