"Pastor's plot is well crafted, her prose sharp... A disturbing mix of detection and reflection."— Publishers Weekly "A mystery, it rivets the reader until the end and beyond, with its twist of historical realities. A historical piece, it faithfully reproduces the grim canvas of war. A character study, it captures the thoughts and actions of real people, not stereotypes."— TheFree Lance-Star Part wartime political intrigue, detective story, psychological thriller, and religious mystery, Ben Pastor's debut follows a German army captain and a Chicago priest as they investigate the death of a nun in Nazi-occupied Poland. In October 1939 Captain Martin Bora discovers the abbess, Mother Kazimierza, shot dead in her convent garden. Her alleged power to see the future has brought her a devoted following; her work and motto, "Lumen Christi Adiuva Nos" ("Light of Christ, help us"), appear also to have brought some enemies. Father Malecki has come to Cracow, at the pope's bidding, to investigate Mother Kazimierza's powers. The Vatican orders him to stay and assist Bora in the inquiry into her killing. Stunned by the violence of the occupation and the ideology of his colleagues, Bora's sense of Prussian duty is tested to the breaking point. The interference of seductive actress Ewa Kowalska does not help matters. Ben Pastor, born in Italy, has lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor in Vermont. She is the author of other novels, including The Water Thief and The Fire Walker (St. Martin's Press).

Praise for Ben Pastor's Lumen : “Pastor’s plot is well crafted, her prose sharp... A disturbing mix of detection and reflection.”— Publishers Weekly "Rivets the reader with its twist of historical realities. A historical piece, it faithfully reproduces the grim canvas of war. A character study, it captures the thoughts and actions of real people, not stereotypes.”— The Free Lance-Star “And don’t miss Lumen by Ben Pastor... An interesting, original, and melancholy tale.”— Literary Review Italy, September 1943. The Italian government switches sides and declares war on Germany. The north of Italy is controlled by the fascist puppets of Germany; the south liberated by Allied forces fighting their way up the peninsula. Having survived hell on the Russian front, Wehrmacht major and aristocrat Baron Martin von Bora is sent to Verona. He is ordered to investigate the murder of a prominent local a bizarre death threatening to discredit the regime’s public image. The prime suspect is the victim’s twenty-eight-year-old widow Clara. Haunted by his record of opposition to SS policies in Russia, Bora must watch his step. Against the backdrop of relentless anti-partisan warfare and the tragedy of the Holocaust, a breathless chase begins. Ben Pastor, born and now back in Italy, lived for thirty years in the United States, working as a university professor in Vermont. The first in the Martin Bora series, Lumen, was published by Bitter Lemon Press in May 2011.

Praise for the Martin Bora series: "The tone of "Liar Moon" has a flu-like grimness, appropriate the 1943 setting. Pastor is excellent at providing details (silk stockings, movie magazines, cigarettes) that light up the setting."—"Booklist" ""Lumen"'s plot is well crafted, her prose shap . . . a disturbing mix of detection and reflection."—"Publisher's Weekly" Rome, 1944. While the Allies are fighting their way up the Italian peninsula, Rome lives the last days of Nazi occupation. Their world is falling apart as the German Army, the Gestapo, and the SS vie for power while holding glittering and debauched parties. But this is also a time of Italian partisan attacks, arrests, and mass executions, all to the sound of Allied artillery bombardment just outside the walls of the city. Baron Martin von Bora, an officer in the Wehrmacht, has the complex and delicate task of solving not one, but three murders. A young German embassy secretary has "accidentally" fallen to her death from a fourth-floor window, and a Roman society lady and a headstrong cardinal of the Roman Curia are found dead in her apartment. The cardinal is personally known to Bora and, like the officer, secretly active in the resistance against the Third Reich. With Italian police inspector Sandro Guidi at his side, Bora sets off to establish the truth. Different as they are, the two men confront crime, war, and dictatorship in the awareness that the dignity of man comes at a price beyond all imagination.

FOURTH IN THE MARTIN BORA SERIES. SPELLBINDING MULTI-LAYERED CRIME NOVEL SET IN UKRAINE AS THE GERMANS REGROUP AFTER THE DISASTER OF STALINGRAD. FOR FANS OF PHILLIP KERR (BERNIE GUNTHER SERIES), ALAN FURST (SPIES OF THE BALKANS). THE HERO, MAJOR MARTIN BORA, IS AN ARISTOCRATIC GERMAN OFFICER OF THE ILK OF CLAUS VON STAUFFENBERG, TORN BETWEEN HIS DUTY AS AN OFFICER AND HIS INTEGRITY AS A HUMAN BEING. Ukraine, 1943. Having barely escaped the inferno of Stalingrad, Major Martin Bora is serving on the Russian front as a German counterintelligence officer. Weariness, disillusionment, and battle fatigue are a soldier’s daily fare, yet Bora seems to be one of the few whose sanity is not marred by the horrors of war. As the Wehrmacht prepare for the Kursk counter-offensive, a Russian general defects aboard a T-34, the most advanced tank of the war. Soon he and another general, this one previously captured, are found dead in their cells. Everything appears to exclude the likelihood of foul play, but Bora begins an investigation, in a stubborn attempt to solve a mystery that will come much too close to home.

Wehmacht officer Bora is sent to recently occupied Crete and must investigate the brutal murder of a Red Cross representative befriended by Himmler. All the clues lead to a platoon of trigger-happy German paratroopers but is this the truth? Bora takes to the mountains of Crete to solve the case, navigating his way between local bandits and foreign resistance fighters.

Spain, summer 1937. The civil war between Spanish nationalists and republicans rages. On the bloody sierras of Aragon, among Generalissimo Franco’s volunteers is Martin Bora, the twenty-something German officer and detective whose future adventures will be told in Lumen, Liar Moon, The Road to Ithaca and others in the Bora series. Presently a lieutenant in the Spanish Foreign Legion, Bora lives the tragedy around him as an intoxicating epic, between idealism and youthful recklessness. The first doubts, however, rise in Bora’ s mind when he happens on the body of Federico Garcia Lorca, a brilliant poet, progressive and homosexual. Who murdered him? Why? The official version does not convince Bora, who begins a perilous investigation. His inquiry paradoxically proceeds alongside that which is being carried out by an “enemy”: Philip Walton, an American member of the International Brigades. Soon enough the German and the New Englander will join forces, and their cooperation will not only culminate in a thrilling chase after a murderer, but also in a very human, existential face-to-face between two adversaries forever changed by their crime-solving encounter...

Bora is ordered to investigate the murder of Walter Niemeyer, a dazzling clairvoyant, a star since the days of the Weimar Republic. For years he has mystified Germany with his astounding prophecies. Bora's inquiry, supported by former S.A member Florian Grimm, resurrects memories of the excessive and brilliant world of Jazz Age cabarets and locales. Around them, in the oppressive summer heat, constant allied bombing, war-weary Berlin teems with refugees and nearly a million foreign laborers. Soon Bora realizes that there is much more at stake than murder in a paranoid city where everyone suspects everyone, and where persistent rumors whisper about a conspiracy aimed at the very heart of the Nazi hierarchy. Could the charming Emmy Pletsch, who works for Claus von Stauffenberg, be a key to understanding what is going on? Bora eventually meets with Stauffenberg, facing an anguishing moral dilemma, as a German soldier and as a man. The 20 July plot and its dramatic implications as never told before.

Nei thriller dell’italoamericana Ben Pastor il lettore trova una miscela dalla composizione originale: si congiungono atmosfere da spy story di guerra, il Secondo conflitto mondiale guardato dalla parte del Terzo Reich; ricostruzioni storico-ambientali di scientifico rigore; infine, un intreccio poliziesco, cupo, intelligente, imprevedibile. Protagonista assoluto è Martin Bora, ufficiale della Wehrmacht, qui cronologicamente agli albori della sua carriera investigativa (benché questo sia l’ultimo romanzo scritto della serie). Bora è un gentiluomo di antica nobiltà guerriera, fascino tenebroso, amante sfortunato, temperamento di severità kantiana, ma soprattutto roso, fino al disagio fisico tangibile, dalla contraddizione che non sa risolvere. Egli ha giurato obbedienza, e il codice d’onore gli vieta deroghe, ma cresce in lui la consapevolezza degli orrori dei nazisti, che disprezza per odio politico, per arroganza aristocratica, ancor più perché offendono il suo senso etico ed estetico. Un personaggio straordinario e fantasioso, ma non storicamente implausibile, visto che il suo modello, ideologico, è il colonnello von Stauffenberg, l’eroico attentatore di Hitler. Siamo nell’aprile del 1939, vigilia di guerra. La carriera di Bora nel controspionaggio è appena iniziata. È ancora entusiasta del lavoro e fiducioso. Il compito è quello di accompagnare una trilaterale tedesco-nipponico-italiana, una conferenza di affari e di scambio di tecnologie militari. Ma è una copertura. La missione reale è di indagare attorno al «Signore delle cento ossa», una spia che secondo una prima ipotesi si identifica nella persona di Ishiro Kobe, rigido generale giapponese. Una mattina, andando a prelevare Kobe per una cavalcata, scopre la scena raccapricciante del primo omicidio: il generale è steso nel suo letto, segnato dai colpi di uno scudiscio; la pistolettata ha lasciato un arabesco rosso sulla parete. Nel bagno accanto, annegato nel sangue, l’aiutante Nogi. Uno scenario di inconfondibile natura. Sembra un delitto di onore, o di passione. Ma Bora si orienta diversamente: un terzo è penetrato nella stanza, l’assassino. Lo intuisce dalla collocazione dell’arma, lo stato dei corpi, una strana fila di formiche. Ma quale il movente? Tra mistificazioni, altri delitti, tradimenti, Martin Bora si inoltra negli ambienti lividi dove la guerra incombente favorisce intrighi come pozioni venefiche. E dove perderà la sua fiducia.

Agosto 1942-marzo 1943. Martin von Bora, uomo tormentato e diviso, ufficiale tedesco dominato da un senso dell’onore che lo imprigiona, è sul fronte di Stalingrado. Riceve l’ordine dal comandante supremo, generale Paulus, di indagare, in quanto agente esperto del controspionaggio, sulla scomparsa nella steppa (incidente, assassinio?) dei coniugi romeni Nicolae Tincu e Bianca Costin, venuti in visita privata al quartier generale delle forze tedesche. L’ordine è strano sotto tutti i punti di vista, in un momento come quello; e i so-spetti si infittiscono presto, quando scopre che i due romeni sono tutt’altro che ospiti banali, ma importanti scienziati che hanno collaborato con Enrico Fermi ed Ettore Majorana. L’indagine si trascina per mesi, nel caos infernale dell’assedio. Bora trova l’aiuto, e forse la vicinanza umana, di un maggiore italiano, Amerigo Galvani, con il quale intravede nel delitto una complicata catena che lega e confonde guerra, interessi privati, spionaggio di alleati e di nemici. Ma tutto affoga in un teatro di ferocia che a Martin appare ogni giorno che passa più catastrofico e rivelatore. E lascia in lui, molto più che una delusione, un senso di nulla. Le tante avventure del detective dell’Abwehr Martin von Bora, un aristocratico spirito d’artista chiuso dentro la divisa della Wehrmacht, un uomo giusto costretto da un perverso giuramento di fedeltà, corrono dalla Guerra di Spagna alla fine della Resistenza, e spaziano dall’Aragona all’Unione Sovietica. Romanzo dopo romanzo, vanno narrando, in chiave poliziesca, con un’esattezza che conosce gli umori dei comandanti così come le smorfie dei cecchini, la Seconda guerra mondiale, vissuta da un altro, estremamente solitario, punto di vista. Gialli con all’interno un lacerante quesito storico-morale.