This is the umpteeth outing for the unlikely but successful pairing of Parisien Jean-Louis St-Cyr of the Surete and the (teddy) bear-like Hermann Kohler of the Gestapo.  As usual neither of them are popular with the powers that be and they have just been bundled off to Avignon when the book opens. This is occupied France and a bitterly cold January in 1943.  Janes is adept at descriptions and I think that even if you read this novel on a tropical beach you would still feel chilly. Rationing is at its height and nobody gets enough to eat, coffee and cigarettes fill people's dreams and in the streets fighting breaks out over firewood.  In Avignon the past lives in the present as the intrepid pair track down the killer of a young madrigal singer who has been found dead in the mediaeval Palais des Papes.  What follows involves a bishop who wants the papacy to return to Avignon, another dead madrigal singer, pornography, disfigured monks and Renaissance jewellery.  Janes delivers a starkly stylish and involved story that seems to be just the right length for enjoyment. 

To its detriment for those who haven't read the rest of the series (me for example) there are constant references to past adventures and I think that for total understanding and enjoyment you really do need to start from the beginning with this series.  Janes has an unusual turn of phrase and a way of putting things that made me wonder whether English is his first language - he is a Canadian - but as the novel is set in France this adds to the Gallic charm.  The two main characters are both well drawn, Kohler in particular fairly leaps off the page as a larger-than-life person who would be worth meeting; St-Cyr is less well-defined and seems to be of secondary importance to his partner.  The rest of the people in the novel are sketchily drawn and when I put the book down the things I remembered about it afterwards (as with the other Janes novel I reviewed earlier) are the wonderful descriptions of wartime France, the tortuous plot and Kohler.  If I read another book in the series I want to remember some other things as well.  My final verdict is that it is well worth reading - but read the others first!