Douglas Jackson (2024) Blood Roses.

Blood Roses is the first in a quartet of books which feature Jan Kalisz. He’s a detective investigating a serial killer. So far so mundane. You know the type. Psychopathic killers. They have their own reason for killing, which relies on a tautology. Their reason for killing is because they’re psychopathic killers.  What makes it different isn’t Douglas Jackson’s undoubted talent, but the timeline.

It’s 1939 and the Germans have just invaded Poland. Kalisz is a patriot. He fought against the Nazis on the front line in the same way that others fought against the Soviet invasion. Concussion saved his life. Took him out of the front line.

When the Nazis occupied Warsaw, he was offered a choice, he could go back to his old job as an investigating officer, working for the Nazis and the SS. Compiling lists of people that would be summarily dealt with in that old fashioned Nazi way of bullet to the head or concentration camp. He could join the rat race and become a rat. Ratting on Jews and undesirables. Life unworthy of life. His perfect German would let him assist his masters but he would still be untermensch. All Polish men, their wives and children were terrorist suspects.

In other words, instead of being an ex-army officer keen to get back to his unit, he’d be a collaborator.  

A psychopathic murderer is killing pubescent girls. Arranging their visceral organs into an artist’s impression of Blood Roses. The first few killings don’t count. Girls that are Poles or worse Jews. Hardly crimes in Nazi reckoning. Certainly not worth using even the lowly Department V that Jan used to work for that dealt with murders, or even the Kripo, which oversaw the new criminality of the Nazi state. But when the daughter of an industrialist, the niece of a Wehrmacht general, and a case in which Himmler takes an interest, is similarly murdered and eviscerated, the clock is ticking.   

The SS want results. Ten hostages will be shot every day until the killer is found. Jan’s father in law is on the list. The best he can do is try and solve the killing and find the killer, before they get to the bottom of the list.

No Nazi trusts a dumb Polack, but Jan finds an unexpected ally in his hunt for the Artist. First, in Obersturmfuhrer Wiesler, despite being an SS officer, he seems almost human.  Next, a familiar name from history. Dr Josef Mengele. Here he provides forensic expertise in examination of the bodies. Jan saves his life. Both Nazis come to admire Jan in some ways but they suspect he might be a Pole first and his German heritage is tainted with bad blood. He might, in fact, be secretly working for a Polish state that no longer exists. Read on.