Murder
Without Pity
Steve
Haberman
Self
Published
Paris
at the start of the second millennium: dark with fog, riots over police
killings, and Far Right demagogues. Here
state criminal investigator Stanislas Cassel works at the Palace of Justice.
Ashamed he’s a grandson of a French Nazi collaborator during Germany’s WWII
Occupation of France, he avoids anything political. Instead he buries himself, solving small
crimes.
One
dossier involves a pensioner’s bizarre murder. During his investigation, Cassel
meets a beautiful Jewish woman, whose family the Germans killed. Haunted by this, she tries to alert him to
the Far Right’s re-emergence, but to no avail.
Tragedy
strikes. He awakes to his blindness and
understands a murderous evil, larger than his small crimes, as the Occupation
portended, lurks. This understanding helps him proceed with his investigation
to the end.
