Book Review - Garden Of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver
Category Book Reviews
I finished up Jeffery Deaver's latest last night... Garden Of Beasts. While I didn't like it as much as his Lincoln Rhyme series, it was still not bad.
The story is set in Berlin 1936, right before the Olympics. Hitler has a member of his cabinet, Reinhard Ernst, who is planning the secret rearmament of Germany. A small group of influential Americans want him stopped, so they offer Paul Schumann, a German-American hit man with a conscience, a chance to avoid prison and get a new start. He's sent over on the ship with the rest of the Olympians, posing as a reporter. He starts his mission, but quickly ends up with a dead person on his hands and the German police trying to find him. The German government also has a hint that something is up, so the protection on Ernst is even heavier than normal. Schumann has to sort out his feelings for his country, figure out who to trust, and still "correct God's mistake". Some sneaky twists show up at the end, and it changes the whole direction of what's going on.
I'm normally not one much for "historical" novels, but I usually like Deaver's work. This one seemed pretty authentic, and showed a Germany slowly moving down the road of Jewish persecution and murder. The story seemed to lag a bit at times, but the detail and attention to plot kept it going. The character development was really well done, as you really felt for the different people, regardless of whether they were good or bad guys. While not a "must read", it's still entertaining if you're looking for something in the crime/espionage genre.
I finished up Jeffery Deaver's latest last night... Garden Of Beasts. While I didn't like it as much as his Lincoln Rhyme series, it was still not bad.
The story is set in Berlin 1936, right before the Olympics. Hitler has a member of his cabinet, Reinhard Ernst, who is planning the secret rearmament of Germany. A small group of influential Americans want him stopped, so they offer Paul Schumann, a German-American hit man with a conscience, a chance to avoid prison and get a new start. He's sent over on the ship with the rest of the Olympians, posing as a reporter. He starts his mission, but quickly ends up with a dead person on his hands and the German police trying to find him. The German government also has a hint that something is up, so the protection on Ernst is even heavier than normal. Schumann has to sort out his feelings for his country, figure out who to trust, and still "correct God's mistake". Some sneaky twists show up at the end, and it changes the whole direction of what's going on.
I'm normally not one much for "historical" novels, but I usually like Deaver's work. This one seemed pretty authentic, and showed a Germany slowly moving down the road of Jewish persecution and murder. The story seemed to lag a bit at times, but the detail and attention to plot kept it going. The character development was really well done, as you really felt for the different people, regardless of whether they were good or bad guys. While not a "must read", it's still entertaining if you're looking for something in the crime/espionage genre.
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