Blood Roses

Douglas Jackson

Canelo, £16.99

In September 1939, Poland falls before the might of the German war machine, Warsaw being absorbed into a larger bureaucratic entity called the General Government.

Already, the people are beginning to starve and lose their homes, and executions are taking place. In hospital, recovering from injuries sustained at the front and keen to return to his unit, Douglas Jackson’s fictional creation Jan Kalisz is visited by an enigmatic official from the Polish resistance who encourages him to go back to his old job in the police, working under the Germans to gather information that might be useful to the Polish cause.

This puts Kalisz in a dangerous position. He knows that his compatriots will inevitably shun him as a collaborator, a traitor helping an occupying army impose its authority. But his new contact, Kazemierz, convinces him that this is the most effective way he can serve his country.

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So Kalisz leaves the army and returns to his old building as a lackey overseen by German haupsturmfuhrers, sorting out the files of Poles to be interned as security risks or executed in reprisal for attacks on German soldiers. He gradually gains their trust until he’s brought “upstairs” as a translator, and starts to take more of an active role in cases, while secretly passing intelligence to the resistance.

There is also some real detective work to be done. The influx of Germans into Warsaw has brought with it a serial killer, a predator with a taste for eviscerating young girls and arranging their internal organs into morbid artworks. No one cares when his victims are Poles or Jews, but when the daughter of a Nazi is murdered tracking down the killer becomes a priority. And investigator Kalisz, despite being hemmed in by Nazi bureaucrats who despise Poles, is the best man for the job.

However, his suspicion that the killer is in fact a member of the SS is a theory that won’t go down well with his new masters. (He is even partnered, uncomfortably, by Josef Mengele for part of the investigation.) Kalisz can’t let his guard down for a second, alert both to signs that his Nazi bosses are growing suspicious of him and to angry Poles who have him marked for death.

Cruellest of all is being unable to tell his wife that he’s a double agent, and watching her feelings for him shrivel as she realises that he’s colluding in the oppression of his people. As the police start to take the serial killer seriously, her own father’s name appears on a list of people to be executed at daily intervals if he is not apprehended.

 

Already the author of the nine-part The Hero of Rome series, Jedburgh-born Jackson intends Blood Roses to be the first of a four-volume series. Along with the important business of showing off Kadisz’s expertise by giving him a case to solve, this opening instalment is largely concerned with laying the groundwork for the future: establishing Kadisz’s predicament, exploring what enemies and allies he might have and planting the seeds of marital discord.

While that might have detracted from it as a standalone novel, one can’t feel short-changed by Blood Roses as it’s well-plotted, set in an intriguing location full of danger and introduces a compelling, conflicted protagonist whose secret may be rumbled at any moment. Already, to maintain his cover, Kadisz has had to commit acts he never would have considered in peacetime.

The mood of claustrophobia and paranoia Jackson whips up in this pressure-cooker environment suggests things will get even more desperate over the three forthcoming volumes.