Paving the New Road

Looking for a fun mystery that takes you into the heart of the Germany during World War One, than look no further, you have found it; Paving The New Road, Sulari Gentil.  This is the fourth book in the Rowland Sinclair Mystery series.  You really should start out with the first book in the series and work your way through.  It is so enjoyable and the characters do develop with each installment of their life story.

Sulari Gentill has done again.  I love having discovered this fun mystery series, “A Rowland Sinclair Mystery”.  Rowland and his friends are off again on another adventure.  Of course there is danger afoot and they get in over their heads.  This mystery series is different than the typical who-nun-it.  This is more a storyline that involves Rowland, Edna, Milton and Clyde in escapades that throw them in the path of danger.  In the end a mystery has been uncovered and solved, but only because they have stumbled on the answers.  This time they are actually sent to Germany to keep the New Guard leader, Eric Campbell from meeting Hitler and while they are there maybe they could solve a murder.  This plot line is based on real people and occurrences of the beginning of Hitler’s rein of terror.  The year is 1933.  Danger surrounds our motley crew, a bohemian wealthy artist, along with his friends a Jewish poet, a gorgeous sculptress and a Communist painter.

The main players in this series are of course Rowland Sinclair, a the bohemian heir to the family estate and fortune along with Wilfred who is the conservative, wealthy, influential, older brother.  Rowland really is unconventional and has turned the stuffy grand parlor of the mansion with its high ceilings and large windows into his art studio.  Here he paints the beautiful, Edna, the sculptress, who also lives in the mansion along with their other friends, Clyde Watson Jones, a painter, and Milton Issacs, a poet.  To the chagrin of the family housekeeper, Mary Brown, Rowland has taken in these strays to live with him and follow adventures with him.

The location is Australia with a historical look at the country and its politics in the 1930s.  We have now arrived at 1933 and Hitler is beginning to make trouble for the world.  As New Guard leader Eric Campbell, the man who would be Australia's Fuhrer, is in England meeting with Britain's Fascist leader, Sir Oswald Mosley, word comes to the unofficial Old Guard back in Australia that Campbell is planning to move onto Germany next and meet with Hitler himself.  It is decided that Rowland and his friends will go to Germany and try to stop that meeting from happening.

When the friends find out that their contact person in Germany has been killed they are now searching for a murderer as they also try to stop the meeting Campbell thinks he has set up with Hitler.  Things get complicated but Edna, Milton and Clyde are always there to cause a bit of trouble and in the end save the day.

Adding more interest to this mystery is the setting of Germany leading up to the war, when one of the main characters is Jewish and gathering of art work in Germany from local Dada artists of the time.  Also added to the intrigue is the story of a young woman photographer they meet along the way and befriend when she seems to be having romantic troubles.  She in the end turns out to be Eva Braun who is in love with a man she calls Mr. Wolf.  So many different tangents to follow, it keeps you caught up til the end.