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Garden of Beasts

by Jeffery Deaver

Garden of Beasts is a frightening re-play of the horrors of Nazi Germany just prior to World War II, and from the explicit actions portrayed by those most fervent to the Nazi cause at that time, you'd think Jeffrey Deaver had experienced those awful times himself, but he wasn't even born yet. Mr. Deaver is therefore to be congratulated once again on his research and realism – Americans as a whole were kept ignorant of the beatings and murders of innocent people until our President, then Franklin D. Roosevelt, finally decided we had to join the fray. But none of this is depicted in Mr. Deaver's novel, which takes place in 1936 – long enough after Hitler came into power to terrorize the Jewish people, pacifists, homosexuals, blacks, and anyone who could be termed by those eager to denounce their neighbor as an enemy of the state – but not soon enough for America to interfere.

The 'Garden of Beasts' is actually the name of a park in Berlin, in German known as Der Tiergarten – a parklike place where noble families once hunted and killed wild predators. In the book, the beasts are the Stormtroopers who beat a young man to death in that identical park. Garden of Beasts begins with the taking of a hit man, Paul Schumann, to a highly secret conclave, where he's given the option of going to Sing Sing (and certain death) or of going to Germany to do what he does best – this time to kill the man responsible for training and expanding the German army both on land and in the air, a man by the name of Reinhard Ernst.

Undercover as a reporter and sports writer, Paul travels with the American Olympic team on its way to the Olympic games to be held in Berlin that year on a ship named 'Manhattan.' What follows is a very complex story which becomes a very telling description of the morals in Germany of that period. Paul becomes chased by the Storm Troopers and the Gestapo, falls in love with a German dissident, misses his object twice, rescues a number of people who would otherwise fall prey to Nazi thugs, gets involved with a German con artist, and eventually manages to free a number of people who wish to escape from Germany. The final pages of Garden of Beasts disclose a very real murderer as well as an impersonator and impostor.

This is not one of Jeffrey Deaver's 'Lincoln Rhyme' novels. Older than Mr. Deaver, I was one of those Americans who didn't realize the fear, revulsion and terror happening in Germany until the actual war began – but the facts as they came to light were enough to cause a person to wonder at the inhumanity of man to man; not that in some cases, it's been extinguished! Jeffrey Deaver is excellent in his portrayal of those who all-too-willingly adopt a 'cause' and become blind to anything or anyone who objects to it. Mr. Deaver is a master at placing you in the midst of a horrific situation and holding you there spellbound until you've finished reading the very last sentence of what he's written!

Alan Paul Curtis

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