Books.org participates in affiliate programs including Bookshop.org and the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program. We may earn a commission from qualifying purchases made through links on this page, at no additional cost to you.
Overview
When the wife of one of Slovakia's most prominent businessmen is killed in a very public assassination, it looks like the bullets were meant for her husband. But could the wife of Oto Bogan have actually been one of the primary targets? And where has Bogan gone? Both he and his son have disappeared without a trace. Commander Jana Matinova was present at the party where the shooting took place, and she was the one who pushed Bogan out of the line of fire. As a witness to the crime, she's being told to stay away from the case, but her Colonel knows that he needs his best investigator on it.Jana must push through her own government's secretiveness and intransigence to discover what connects the murder of Klara Boganova to an anonymous man run down in Paris, a dead Turk with an icepick in his eye, and an international network of bank accounts linking back to the Second World War. The key to the case may lie with a mysterious, vagabond girl who has attached herself to Jana and who seems to be connected to the notorious international criminal Makine, AKA Koba. To solve the case and stop an ongoing series of murders, Jana must travel to Berlin and Paris and look back into the darkest period of Slovak history.
From the Hardcover edition.
Editorials
Publishers Weekly
Genelin once again makes present-day Slovakia a compelling backdrop for murder in his superb fourth novel featuring Police Commander Jana Matinova (after 2010's The Magician's Accomplice). At a high-profile party hosted by Oto Bogan, a financier with political aspirations who fears assassination, a gunman opens fires, killing Bogan's wife, Klara. Since Matinova witnessed the attack, she's officially excluded from the investigation, but she finds a way to involve herself and explore the theory that Klara was the intended victim all along. The death of an elderly Bogan relative in France may be connected with the hit, and the disappearance of Bogan and his son complicates a knotty plot that ranks as one of the series' best. Martinova pursues the truth in Berlin and Paris to her peril. Genelin's no-nonsense lead will appeal to fans of strong female detectives such as Kinsey Millhone, V.I. Warshawski, and Jane Tennison. (July)Library Journal
Once again, a compelling and intricate case for the Slovakian detective (The Magician's Accomplice).Kirkus Reviews
Nazi progeny, scamming gypsies and an ice pick–wielding assassin besmirch Slovakia.
Commander Jana Matinova (Dark Dreams,2009, etc.) accompanies her boss Colonel Trokan to Oto Bogan's birthday gala, where shots fell Bogan's wife Klara, injure Trokan and miss Oto only because of Jana's swift action. While Trokan recuperates, Madam Prosecutor Truchanova and her minions make little headway despite their access to the confidential Rostov Report suggesting ties to World War II financial irregularities. But Jana, launching her own investigation, learns that there were two gunmen who may have targeted both Bogans, possibly set up by master criminal Makine. While she's at home reading up on another case, the perhaps not accidental death of a Rom (gypsy), a near-frozen waif appears at Jana's. Lonely and missing her granddaughter, Jana admits her. Her lapse in judgment will make her vulnerable to (1) several sets of tails as she travels from Bratislava to Vienna to Berlin to Paris and back again and (2) several attempts on her life, including a spectacular shootout at a German zoo that claims two dirty Munich cops and a Turkish criminal. Meanwhile, Oto is again targeted for death. It seems that he was part of a menage à trois with Klara and her ex-husband, Radomir Kralik, and that trio had been buying up European banks and greedily siphoning off vast sums. All will be clarified when Jana discovers the connections between a hit-and-run victim's tattoo, the dreaded WWII Hlinka Guard and the Rostov Report.
Jana, one of the more intriguing characters in fictional thrillerdom, makes fallibility seem like a virtue.