Review: Garden of Beasts

We meet Paul Schumann in an apartment building that’s not his own and watch as Schumann realizes he’s been set-up and is moments away from eating it. But we soon learn that actually Paul Schumann, a hired gun, or “button man”, is not moments away from death after all, but instead is being offered a chance to turn his criminal life around and help out the U.S government and the world at the same time. And all he has to do is assassinate a high ranking Nazi official, Reinhard Ernst, the man responsible for rebuilding Germany’s military. With his only chance at a new life a high risk assignment into Nazi Germany during the lead up to the 1936 Summer Olympic Games, Paul Schumann can do nothing but agree.

And that’s how we’re introduced to Garden of Beasts, Jeffery Deaver’s 2004 thriller, winner of the Ian Fleming Steel Dagger Award, and allegedly the book that helped Deaver get the job writing the next Bond novel, provisionally titled Project X.

Unfortunately, though, the thrills don’t last. After introducing us to Paul Schumann’s mission, Deaver whisks us away to Nazi Germany, where we see Schumann chat it up with Jesse Owens before arriving in Berlin. Then the scene switches to Reinhard Ernst, the man Schumann is after. And so the back and forth begins, with Willi Kohl and his partner added shortly after, the two men Nazi detectives searching for the man who murdered the man who almost murdered Schumann.

But the back and forth lacks any real tension or intrigue, and there is very little action to sustain interest throughout the first half of the book. We go from Schumann trying to reach his contacts and then plan his mission, to Willi Kohl searching for clues to the murder and simultaneously trying to track down Schumann, to Reinhard Ernst feeling nervous about having to turn in a cerain Waltham Study to Hitler by Monday. The writing is good enough to carry you along, if you are patient, but I was wondering the whole time if it would ever pay off.

And boy, did it.

The second half of the novel begins with a twist that I didn’t see coming, and which, more importantly, didn’t feel cheap or unearned. Too often in thrillers a plot twist is thrown in that’s either not believable or contrived, making it too convenient for the author to continue on with the story and drag you along with him, begging to have the solution revealed to you, yet knowing deep down that the answers won’t satisfy you when they come.

But Deaver avoids all that, and he does it consistently. Because there isn’t just one shocking revelation. As the story accelerated towards the end, I was wondering who was who, but not in a confusing way, like I was having trouble keeping the characters straight, but in an intriguing way, wondering who can Paul trust and just who is everybody? Deaver reveals the information in a way that is natural because it just happens, yet you don’t stop yourself, pull away from the book and go “huh?”

Instead, you accept the turn because it was inevitable, though you wouldn’t have guessed it beforehand (at least I didn’t), and you don’t have a problem with it. Jeffery Deaver says himself that he is known for his “trademark” plot twists, and, having experienced them myself, I understand why he is considered so consistent a writer. He clearly knows what he’s doing, likely from the copious outlining he does before he writes–seven to eight months according to Deaver–and his dialogue flows so smoothly that naturally that you’ll forget yourself as your reading, as all good books make one do, as you become lost in the tale Deaver is twisting.

There are a few problems with the book, however, despite the deft handling of the plot. The romance with Käthe Richter happens too fast. Way too fast. It’s just not believable at all, and given that it has little importance on the story, I don’t know why it is there. Sure, the romance serves to show us Schumann’s good side, but there are plenty of other events later on that do the same thing much better, so the romance with Käthe is unnecessary here.

And why is Paul Schumann bothering with a romance when he has the police after him, and he’s in the middle of setting up his assignment? Shouldn’t he be laying low rather than going out on the town. Yes, he has an ulterior motive for that, but he seems a bit careless regardless. Schumann also ought to think twice about meeting his contacts in the same place all the time. He should also think twice about getting into a fistfight with Stormtroopers just to protect a couple strangers he just bumped into. It’s kind of hard to remain anonymous when you’re beating on Brownshirts.

For the most part, though, Jeffery Deaver succeeds in telling a gripping story that feels important, even if his main character, Paul Schumann, is kind of mundane and unmemorable. You’ll have to be patient for the book to get going–it takes about 220 pages, which is over half the book–but once the story does get going, it doesn’t stop, and the conclusion it reaches is somehow satisfying, if unexpected.

Garden of Beasts is a success, and with it, Jeffery Deaver shows he is in command of his storytelling.