Book Description
Private investigator Jeri Howard can scarcely believe that someone is actually paying her to go to Paris, even if it is only to fetch a wild teenager home. But the wanderer, eighteen-year-old Darcy, turns out to have a serious reason for her unauthorized jaunt: to visit Holocaust memorials and to meet the French family who sheltered her grandmother, as a girl, from the Nazis.But back home in California, Darcy stumbles on evidence that Nazism is alive and well in the terrifying present. And Jeri has the deadly work of trying to extricate Darcy from the frightening consequences of her discovery. . . .
From the Inside Flap
Private investigator Jeri Howard can scarcely believe that someone is actually paying her to go to Paris, even if it is only to fetch a wild teenager home. But the wanderer, eighteen-year-old Darcy, turns out to have a serious reason for her unauthorized jaunt: to visit Holocaust memorials and to meet the French family who sheltered her grandmother, as a girl, from the Nazis.
But back home in California, Darcy stumbles on evidence that Nazism is alive and well in the terrifying present. And Jeri has the deadly work of trying to extricate Darcy from the frightening consequences of her discovery. . . .
From the Back Cover
"Jeri combines V.I. [Warshawski]'s social conscience with Kinsey [Millhone]'s bad-ass attitude and snappy narrative voice."
--The Washington Post Book World
About the Author
Janet Dawson's first novel, Kindred Crimes, won the Private Eye Writers of America Best First Private Eye Novel Contest and was nominated for Anthony and Shamus awards as well. She is a member of the Mystery Writers of America and Sisters in Crime and has written six other Jeri Howard mysteries: Till the Old Men Die, Take a Number, Don't Turn Your Back on the Ocean, Nobody's Child, A Credible Threat, and Where the Bodies Are Buried. Dawson worked as an enlisted journalist in the navy before moving to Alameda, California.
Witness to Evil (A Jeri Howard Mystery) FROM THE PUBLISHER
Private investigator Jeri Howard can scarcely believe that someone is actually paying her to go to Paris, even if it is only to fetch a wild teenager home. But the wanderer, eighteen-year-old Darcy, turns out to have a serious reason for her unauthorized jaunt: to visit Holocaust memorials and to meet the French family who sheltered her grandmother as a girl from the Nazis. But back home in California, Darcy stumbles on evidence that Nazism is alive and well in the terrifying present. And Jeri has the deadly work of trying to extricate Darcy from the frightening consequences of her discovery.
FROM THE CRITICS
Publishers Weekly
In the seventh Jeri Howard mystery (after A Credible Threat), Dawson doesn't quite carry off her attempt to link a moving story of Jewish children hidden from the Nazis in WWII Paris with a present-day mystery involving skinheads in California. In Part I, the Northern California PI is hired to go to Paris and bring home 17-year-old Darcy Stefano, who has a history of running away from her wealthy, self-centered parents. Trailing Darcy around the Holocaust memorials and Jewish museums in Paris, Jeri discovers that the girl is on a pilgrimage to honor her beloved French grandmother, who, as a Jewish child in Paris during WWII, was hidden with a Catholic family to escape from the Nazis. The rest of her family died in the Holocaust. In Part II, a few months after their return to the States, Jeri is hired to look for Darcy again. Darcy has disappeared from her boarding schoolwhere a maintenance man has been murdered. Jeri's methodical investigation of the school and of the murder victim turn up murmurings of skinheads, neo-Nazis and the Ku Klux Klan. When she finally puts the pieces together, she and Darcy are both in serious danger. The Paris segment, a lovingly detailed travel guide with an unusual perspective, isn't adequately integrated into the mystery involving the California extremist groups. Jeri's painstaking reporting of every freeway exit, meal and cup of coffee she takes further slows the pace of a tale that misses the mystery mark. (Oct.)
Art & Photography
Book Info
