A Jana Matinova Investigation Series

The fourth Jana Matinova Investigation

When the wife of one of Slovakia’s most prominent businessmen is killed in a very public assassination, it looks like the bullets were meant for her husband. But could she have been the primary target? Commander Jana Matinova must push through her own government’s secretiveness and intransigence to discover what connects the murder of Klara Boganova to an anonymous man run down in Paris, a dead Turk with an ice pick in his eye, and an international network of bank accounts linking back to the Second World War.

An indigent student has been shot and killed in an upscale hotel in the center of Bratislava. It appears to be a professional assassination, but who would want to kill a starving student? After examining the crime scene, Jana Matinova pays a visit to her lover, a government prosecutor. But when she arrives at his office, she learns that he’s been killed by a phone bomb. Jana is devastated but determined to find his murderer.

Professional killings aren’t common in Bratislava. Could the two deaths be connected? Before Jana can even begin investigating, she is transferred to The Hague, headquarters of the international police force of Europol. On the flight, she encounters a retired magician who turns out to be the dead student’s uncle. He wants to help Jana investigate his nephew’s death. And his help is needed, as Jana is soon confronted with an international conspiracy emanating from Europol itself.

The second Jana Matinova investigation set in Slovakia

Jana and Sofia were best friends in school. Sofia suffered a brutal crime at the hands of a Communist Party bigwig, whom Jana vowed to bring to justice someday. Jana is now a commander in the Slovak police force, and Sofia is a member of parliament, engaged in a scandalous affair with a married fellow MP. One day, Jana walks into her living room to find an enormous diamond dangling from the ceiling. Who has left her this gift, and what does it mean? The answer will lead her across Europe to the center of a deadly conspiracy in which Sophia has become hopelessly entangled.

Jana entered the Czechoslovak police force as young woman, married an actor, and became a mother. The Communist regime destroyed her husband, their love for one another, and her daughter’s respect for her. But she has never stopped being a seeker of justice.

Now, she has risen to the rank of commander in the Slovak police force and is based in the capital, Bratislava, a crossroads of central Europe. She liaises with colleagues across the continent to track a master criminal whose crimes include extortion, murder, kidnapping, and the operation of a vast human trafficking network.

This investigation takes her from Kiev in Ukraine to the headquarters of the European Community in Strasbourg, France; from Vienna to Nice during the Carnival, as she searches for a ruthless killer and the beautiful young Russian woman he is determined to either capture or destroy.