In Vichy, a dead mistress points to an assassination plot.

At the Battle of Verdun, Marshal Philippe Pétain’s heroic leadership won him the respect and admiration of all of France. In the decades that follow the Great War, his ambition is boundless, but not until Hitler arrives does he claim the job he’s always wanted. When the Wehrmacht subdue the French army, Pétain takes the reins of his conquered nation, becoming World War II’s most infamous collaborator.

In February 1943, as the war turns against Germany, Pétain administers his puppet state from the spa town of Vichy. In his 80s, but still able to admire a pretty face, he asks to borrow the mistress of one of his subordinates. Before she arrives, the girl is murdered. Fearing a plot against his life, Pétain calls in inspectors Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler. But they find something far more sinister than a conspiracy against the war hero who became a war criminal.

J. Robert Janes (b. 1935) 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 started writing fiction. He began his career as a novelist by writing young adult books, starting with The Odd-Lot Boys and the Tree-Fort War (1976). He wrote his last young adult novel, Murder in the Market, in 1985, by which time he had begun writing for adults, starting with the four-novel Richard Hagen series.
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. The thirteenth in the series, Bellringer, was published in 2012. 

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