RUINS OF WAR

Winter 1945, Munich: an ex-detective U.S. soldier investigates a series of brutal murders that lead back to the horrors of the recent war.

Seven months after the end of the war, Munich is in ruins; disease, starvation and winter’s icy embrace have replaced the bullets and bombs. Yet deadly crime does persist, and Chief Warrant Officer Mason Collins, former Chicago homicide detective, U.S. soldier, and prisoner-of-war, has to enforce the law in the American Zone of Occupation. When a mutilated body is found in an abandoned factory and arranged in a gruesome display, the army brass calls on Mason to find the killer and stop him. Tracking this elusive criminal who seems to choose his victims at random yields precious few leads, and the clues that Mason does find seem to contradict each other. The suspect’s obvious anatomical expertise could mean that he is an American army doctor—or an infamous Nazi concentration-camp surgeon. Yet the rituals he enacts hint at a religious vocation, while the tormented messages he leaves sound like those of a concentration-camp survivor. In a city with thousands of places to hide and millions of easy prey, Mason can only rely on his wit and gut instincts. But at each turn the killer eludes his pursuer, and Mason must go places he never could have imagined: from interrogation rooms with unrepentant Nazi war criminals to penetrating the U.S. Army’s own black market. Before Mason knows it, the murderer has identified him. Now it’s a high-stakes duel, and to win it Mason must bring into deadly play all that he values: his friend and partner, his future as a police detective, his newfound love—even his life. Debut author John Connell introduces a compelling new protagonist in Mason Collins—a wry-humored, unrepentant rulebreaker who is willing to break the bounds of protocol to protect the innocent and find justice. John Connell was an established cinematographer for blockbuster Hollywood movies and television, working with Steven Spielberg and Ridley Scott, and others. This is his debut novel. He now lives in Versailles, France.