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Garden of Beasts: A Novel of Berlin 1936 Audiobook
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Publisher Description
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.
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"good world war 2 fantasy novel with some hitman stuff"
— agough1 (5 out of 5 stars)
Quotes
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“The best psychological thriller writer around.”
— Times (London) -
“Slick, breathless stuff from a master of suspense in full flight.”
— Guardian -
“This is prime Deaver, which means prime entertainment.”
— Publishers Weekly -
“Although not known for historical fiction, Deaver takes the new genre in stride, subtly and plausibly working real people into the tale while delivering his signature sense of story, depth of characterization, and sharply rendered dialogue…Deaver’s audience will be pleased with this one, but it will be an equally big hit with fans of such Nazi-era thrillers.”
— Booklist
Awards
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A New York Times bestseller
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Winner of the 2004 CWA Ian Fleming Steel Dagger
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An Audible.com bestseller
Garden of Beasts Listener Reviews
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Ty Freeborn, 3/11/2021
About Jeffery Deaver
Jeffery Deaver is a New York Times bestselling author whose books are sold in 150 countries and have been translated into twenty-five languages. A two-term president of Mystery Writers of America, he was recently named a Grand Master by the organization, joining the ranks of Agatha Christie, Ellery Queen, Mary Higgins Clark, and Walter Mosley. The author of fifty novels, more than one hundred short stories, a nonfiction book on the law, and the lyricist of a country-western album, Deaver has received dozens of awards, including: Novel of the Year by the International Thriller Writers, the Steel Dagger Award from CWA, a lifetime achievement from the Bouchercon World Mystery Convention and The Strand Magazine, and the Raymond Chandler Award.
About Jefferson Mays
Jefferson Mays, an Earphones Awards-winning narrator, is also an award-winning theater and film actor. In 2004 he won a Tony Award, a Drama Desk Award, an Obie Award, and a Theatre World Award for his solo Broadway performance in I Am My Own Wife, a Pulitzer Prize–winning play by Doug Wright. He holds a BA from Yale College and an MFA from University of California–San Diego.