A review by jlrmac
Garden of Beasts by Jeffery Deaver

4.0

Garden of Beasts, also can be translated as Garden of "Thugs". Set around 1936 Hitler's World Olympics in Berlin. Interesting interplay of people from all sorts of perspectives in several countries. A human side shown for most of the characters, even some of the Nazi's. I listened to the audio version and had quite a bit of trouble at first because I had to listen so carefully to figure out who was talking or being talked about. To make things even worse, the author often called the main character by his first name "Paul" and another main character by his last name: "Kohl." In the audio version these two names have exactly the same vowel sound and ending letter. Visually the names are quite different, so I had to listen very carefully and visualize the names to keep it straight. This main character can certainly be in sequels, but I don't think there are any. One of the things I liked about this book is that the technology was "analog"--before the computer information age. But they still had some high tech stuff like wireless communication and spying. In an interview Jeffery Deaver said his favorite character was probably Otto Weber, and after reading the book a second time, I concur!