ABOUT THE BOOK
Everyone hides secrets. Some provoke murder.
Olivia Denis discovers her father kneeling over the body of a man . . . a man who supposedly drowned in the Channel years before. Olivia wants to ring for help, her father wants to hide the body, but a mysterious phone call brings Scotland Yard to the murder scene.
Olivia can’t stand by and let her maddening, disapproving father hang. To prove his innocence – and learn his secrets – she must work with a master spy. The search for clues takes Olivia to the continent and the Kent countryside, Hastings and London, pushing her deeper into the world of danger and deception.
Book Details:
Title: Deadly Deception
Author: Kate Parker
Genre: Historical Cozy Mystery
Series: The Deadly Series, book 4
Publisher: JDP Press (March 22, 2019)
Print length: 316 pages
GUEST POST BY KATE PARKER
Kristallnacht
In writing historical mysteries, it’s always important to remember what was happening in the world at that time. For Deadly Deception, a key event occurring during the four weeks of the story is Kristallnacht.
The bare facts about Kristallnacht are simple enough. On November 7, 1938, a seventeen-year-old Polish-German Jewish student shot a Nazi embassy official in Paris. The student, who had grown up in Germany but whose parents were born in Poland, was angry at the treatment of his family. On October 28, Germany had expelled many Polish-Jewish citizens who were living in Germany, but Poland refused to let them in. Thousands of people were trapped at the German-Polish border, unable to get into either country, left without food, shelter or their basic human needs being met. Winter would soon kill them all by cold and illness. The parents of the student were in this borderland.
The embassy official died of his wounds on the morning of November 9th. In retaliation that night, “spontaneous” attacks, well-organized and led by Nazi SA thugs, looted, attacked, and burned thousands of Jewish owned businesses, homes, and synagogues all over Germany and Austria, which had been annexed into Germany. So much glass was broken from shop windows that it looked like the roads were paved in it, giving the event the name Kristallnacht, which means the night of broken glass.
The army, the police, and the fire brigades all over the country were ordered to look the other way. While many members of these organizations were happy to stand back and let the attacks go on, or where afraid to act against the orders of the Gestapo, some policemen and firemen did try to stop the destruction.
The destruction went on all night and into the next day. When it ended, 91 people were killed and 30,000 males between 16 and 60 were arrested and sent to concentration camps. Hundreds of buildings were burned and destroyed. Thousands of homes were ransacked. All compensation money paid by insurance companies was confiscated by the Nazi government. The government fined the Jewish community in Germany and Austria one Billion Reichsmarks in damages, blaming the Jews for starting the fires.
Since the war had not yet started, newspapers from various countries had reporters in Germany who reported on the violence and destruction of Kristallnacht. Citizens and governments around the world protested against the riots.
This was considered the beginning of the Holocaust. Jewish children were barred from attending school starting November 15, and by December, Jews were banned from most public places in Germany. Jewish newspapers were closed. Jews were no longer allowed to possess weapons. If found in possession of a weapon, the penalty was twenty years confinement in a concentration camp.
In the ten months from Kristallnacht until the beginning of World War II, more than 115,000 Jews were able to leave Germany for other European nations, the US, Palestine, and Shanghai, China. This was despite the resistance from other nations to take in German refugees. The German government was in favor of Jewish emigration because the government would then take everything they left behind, buildings, home furnishings, businesses, to give to their own followers.
Olivia Denis, the heroine of Deadly Deception, is in Berlin to help two older women escape to Britain when Kristallnacht is about to begin. She’s warned by a German army colonel she first met in London in Deadly Scandal that they must leave that day. The colonel isn’t a Nazi or a fan of their politics, and he is happy to warn Olivia of the coming danger. From the train heading for France, the three women see the fires of Kristallnacht.
Kristallnacht is just one event in Deadly Deception. Olivia’s greatest wish is to hurry back to London, because her father has been charged with murder and with the police not looking for another suspect, she needs to prove her father innocent.
The Deadly Series, including the latest, Deadly Deception, can be found in e-books and paperbacks at your favorite online retailers, including:
Amazon | Barnes & Noble | iTunes | Kobo
ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Kate Parker grew up in
Washington, D C, spent several years along the Carolina coast, and now
finds herself in the Colorado front range. All the time, she has been
busy plotting to spend more time in her favorite city, London, where her
books are set. So far, she hasn’t been able to build a time machine, so
she has to visit historical sites and books to immerse herself in the
details of life in bygone days.
2019 will see the publication of her
fourth Deadly Series book, Deadly Deception, as well as a novella, The
Mystery at Chadwick House. Chadwick House will both be for sale at the
usual retailers plus given away to the readers of her newsletter. It is
her first contemporary mystery. Later in the year, Kate plans on
publishing the second Milliner Mystery. Her daughter has informed her
this year she will also become the servant of a large, exuberant dog.
Connect with Kate:
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Buy the book:
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