COLLISION OF LIES, John J. Le Beau

****     Great thriller!

John Le Beau gives us another collision!  Engaging suspense in lovely scenario. Once again, german police detective Kommisar Franz Waldbaer leads the investigation with his Austrian colegue, Frau Sabine Reiner and CIA agent Robert Hirter.  

Georg Forster, founder of the Österriche Nationalistische Verteidgungs Front Partei ( a neo nazi party), was found dead in what seems a crash accident, but his succesor, Anton Hessler, claims he was murdered by the mossad.  Kommisar Franz Waldbaer was ordered to investigate, since the crash occured 20 km. from the border of Austria, in Germany, and Kommissarin  Frau Sabine Reiner from Innsbrück, since Forster was Austrian and was leaving Austria as it happened.  

They find out somebody was tailing him, an agent of the mossad, who was killed too.  So the investigation expands from the south of Germany to the north port of Hamburg, and Austria, from Langfield, Virginia, to Azerbaijan, and Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan.

Funny situations about the idyosincrasy of Austrian people and the beliefs of Kommisarin Sabine, who is a very feminist woman, and also about who is to lead this investigation, plus where they should meet, (München or Innsbück) leading Waldbaer to think that austrian people had an inferiority complex because Austria used to be a very powerful empire and was now only a tourist destination.  Sabine thinks he is chauvinistic and he is not a very good host since he provided her with coffee in a ceramic mug which was less than robustly cleaned, while she invited him with strudel and coffe from Julius Meinl (a coffee shop with 150 years of history).  She is always against his meeting places, such as the Bier Garten. :-)

It was nice to notice Le Beau was familiar with Bayern, enough to know bavarians greet each other with "Grussgott" being mostly catholic, instead of Hallo, or Guten Morgen as in other states of Germany.  The description of every place is very good too.  It was a pleasure to read and I felt transported minus jet lag to germany and austria.