ÿþ<HTML> <HEAD> <TITLE>The St-Cyr/Kohler Mystery Series</TITLE> <META NAME="keywords" CONTENT="St-Cyr,Kohler,Mystery,Series,J,Robert,Janes,writer"> </HEAD> <BODY> <IMG SRC="m6.jpg"> <BR> <P><SPAN STYLE="text-decoration: underline">FIRST, A LITTLE ABOUT MYSELF</SPAN>:</P> <P> </P> <P><EM>Sum id quod sum</EM>-I am what I am-and make no apology for it. With a B.A. Sc. in Mining Engineering (1958), an M. Eng. in Geology (1967), and having been a petroleum engineer, a research scientist in minerals beneficiation, a field geologist, a high-school teacher, and finally a university lecturer, even to doing the first year of my doctorate in Pleistocene Geology, I put it all behind me, and with four young children, turned to full-time writing in June 1970. And certainly I know how difficult it can be, but am known for what I do best and have done for well over the past 20 years, and that is to write about France under the German Occupation. Even years after the 12<SUP>th</SUP> in the St-Cyr/Kohler series came out, Marilyn Stasio, of the New York Times, very kindly stated on 8 Oct. 2009: 'Who's left to give the brides away? Who investigates civilian crimes like robbery and murder? Those are the kinds of questions posed by J. Robert Janes in a brilliant series of <EM>policiers</EM> set in Vichy France during the German Occupation.'</P> <P> I've been a panellist or moderator at every one of the many Bouchercon World Mystery Conferences attended. I've also read at Harbourfront and been interviewed by Peter Gzowski on Morningside and countless times by others and have held what has to have been the most memorable of launches at the Rand Institute in Niagara-on-the-Lake. My archive is at McMaster University's Library, but as to what drives me, let me just state that I think story all the time and have at least three or four in my head even while actively working on another.</P> <P> Now let me tell you about St-Cyr and Kohler, then add a little more about myself, and give you a list of my books.</P> <BR WP="BR1"><BR WP="BR2"> <P><SPAN STYLE="text-decoration: underline">THE ST-CYR/KOHLER SERIES</SPAN></P> <P> </P><IMG SRC="books.JPG"align="left"width="500" height"400"><b> <p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;<span style="text-decoration: underline">News, news, lovely news:</span></p> <p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;</p> <p>&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;&#160;In December 2011, I signed two contracts with The Mysterious Press in New York. They will publish the complete St-Cyr and Kohler series, all 12 of them, in e-book form and print-on- demand, releasing one a month throughout 2012. They will also publish a new mystery, the 13<sup>th</sup> in the series, <span style="text-decoration: underline">Bellringer</span>, so please watch for these.</p></b> <BR CLEAR="all"> <br> <BR WP="BR1"><BR WP="BR2"> <P> </P> <BR WP="BR1"><BR WP="BR2"> <BR WP="BR1"><BR WP="BR2"> <br> <IMG ALIGN=left SRC="Image2.jpg"HSPACE="10"> It's German-occupied France during the Second World War. Two honest detectives, one from each side of that war, fight common crime in an age of officially sanctioned crime on a horrendous scale. Gangsters have been let out of jail and put to work by the Gestapo and SS; collaborators welcome the Occupier and line their pockets; ordinary citizens struggle to survive; inflation hits 165% while wages are frozen at 1939 levels; but most of all, German servicemen come on leave to Paris,  our friends' to some,  the Green Beans' to others, the  Schlocks, the Boche'. <P>Paris, unlike all other cities and towns in war-torn Europe, is an open city, a showcase Hitler uses to let his boys know how good things can be under Nazi rule. French Gestapo are everywhere and definitely don't like these two detectives since St-Cyr put many of them away before the war, but Kohler is all too ready to tell them this and is fast becoming a citizen of the world under Louis' influence and also has no use for the Occupier, even to ridiculing Nazi invincibility. Hated and reviled by the Occupier and often by the Occupied, the two constantly tread a minefield.</P><br> <P> Paris is home territory but as the only two honest cops around, they are sent throughout the country, so we see aspects of the Occupation from different perspectives, yet everywhere there is the nightly ink of the blackout and the nail-down of the curfew. Muggings, rapes, purse-snatchings, murders, break-ins, prostitution, juvenile delinquency and acts of outright vandalism all see huge increases. It's blackout crime-time and there are a dozen novels in this series. <P> <br> <br><br><A HREF="review1.html"> <IMG ALIGN=left SRC="book.jpg"></A> <br><br> </BODY> </HTML>