In the most ingenious and provocative thriller yet from acclaimed New
York Times bestselling author Jeffery Deaver, a conscience-plagued
mobster turned government hitman struggles to find his moral compass
amid rampant treachery and betrayal in 1936 Berlin.
Paul Schumann, a German American living in New York City in 1936, is a
mobster hitman known as much for his brilliant tactics as for taking
only "righteous" assignments. But then Paul gets caught. And the
arresting officer offers him a stark choice: execution or covert
government service. Paul is asked to pose as a journalist covering the
summer Olympics taking place in Berlin. He's to hunt down and kill
Reinhard Ernst--the ruthless architect of Hitler's clandestine
rearmament. If successful, Paul will be pardoned and given the financial
means to go legit.
Paul travels to Germany, takes a room in a boarding house near the
Tiergarten--the huge park in central Berlin but also, literally, the
"Garden of Beasts"--and begins his hunt. In classic Deaver fashion, the
next forty-eight hours are a feverish cat-and-mouse chase, as Paul
stalks Ernst through Berlin while a dogged Berlin police officer and the
entire Third Reich apparatus search frantically for the American.
Garden of Beasts is packed with fascinating period detail and features
a cast of perfectly realized locals, Olympic athletes, and senior Nazi
officials--some real, some fictional. With hairpin plot twists, the
reigning "master of ticking-bomb suspense" (People) plumbs the
nerve-jangling paranoia of pre-war Berlin and steers the story to a
breathtaking and wholly unpredictable ending.
The novel won the Steel Dagger award for best espionage thriller of the
year from the prestigious Crime Writers' Associate in the United
Kingdom.
