Caught between empires, a young woman risks her life for IrelandMary Ellen Fraser speeds down the lonely country road, aware that no matter how fast she drives, she cannot outrun the secret in her heart. In the POW camps of Northern Ireland, this doctor's wife found a lover—a handsome German officer who begged her to smuggle a letter to his cousin. But the cousin is a lie, and the note is really an encoded message for Admiral Dönitz, high commander of the Nazi fleet. Not only has Mary betrayed her husband, she has betrayed Britain, as well.When she discovers the consequences of her unwitting bit of espionage, Mary does everything she can to undo the damage. Trapped between Britain, Germany, and the merciless Irish Republican Army, Mary is the only person who can keep the Nazis from landing in Ireland.

A Frenchman and a German search for a killer in occupied ParisPolice inspector Jean-Louis St-Cyr watches the German tanks roll into Paris from his office window. When Gestapo agents burst through his door, he is destroying confidential documents with the care that is his trademark. As the Nazis take control of the city, they allow St-Cyr to remain at his post, solving the everyday crimes which do not stop simply because there is a war on. He is assigned a partner, Bavarian detective Hermann Kohler, a bullish man who is as brutal as St-Cyr is refined. Though their politics differ, neither man is the sort to let a bad deed go unpunished.Today their work takes them to a suburban forest, where a well-dressed young man has been found murdered and stripped of identification. Nearby lies an expensive beaded silk purse. Although it appears to be a crime of passion, its roots lie in the savagery that wartime nurtures and occupation lets run free.

St-Cyr and Kohler uncover a black market beekeeping conspiracyDuring winter, the bees of Paris huddle into spheres, sacrificing some of the drones to keep the queen warm. In the winter of 1943, as rationing limits access to luxury goods, those at the top of Parisian society think nothing of sacrificing the poor for the sake of the black market.The latest casualty is a beekeeper, murdered in his apiary after getting in the way of a smuggling operation. The next night, burglars rob his hives, taking several kilos of honey at the expense of 300,000 bees. As news filters in about the hundreds of thousands of soldiers who died in the fight for Stalingrad, the massacre of the bees seems insignificant. But to inspectors Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler, the dead bees point to a conspiracy that, if revealed, could send Paris into revolt.

A gruesome arson case takes St-Cyr and Kohler to LyonIn a packed movie theater, an usher notices two women enter and leave just before the show begins. Moments later, the theater goes up in flames, and 183 people perish in the stampede to escape. By the time investigators Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler arrive from Paris, the charred bodies are frozen solid.It is two days before Christmas, 1942, and the people of Lyon are terrified. As the detectives try to unravel what happened in that packed movie house, the arsonists plan their next attack. Saving Lyon from fire will force St-Cyr and Kohler to confront the worst of human nature, in a city lorded over by one of the most infamous Nazis of the Second World War.

In Provence, St-Cyr and Kohler investigate an old-fashioned murderThe train ride from Paris is supposed to take four hours, but a Resistance bomb has snarled the tracks, and detectives Jean-Louis St-Cyr and Hermann Kohler are fourteen hours behind schedule. By the time they arrive in Provence, they are travel-weary but intrigued. Even in wartime, it's rare to investigate a murder by crossbow.The woman was in her early fifties, with well-made clothing and opal earrings that indicate that, until war came, she was wealthy. The crossbow bolt was barbed, and as she tried to pull it out, it shredded her heart. St-Cyr and Kohler quickly learn why the villagers are loath to cooperate: The woman was a smuggler, killed to protect the black market that the inhabitants of this frigid, war-wracked countryside cannot survive without.