Garden of Beasts

Critics and authors hail the suspense fiction of
    JEFFERY DEAVER
    “A SCREAMING HIT.”
    —The New York Times Book Review
    “SCARY, SMART, AND COMPULSIVELY READABLE.”
    —Stephen King
    “A THRILL RIDE BETWEEN COVERS.”
    —Los Angeles Times
    Praise for his explosive New York Times bestseller
    GARDEN OF BEASTS
    “[A] prodigiously talented thriller writer. . . . Deaver . . . bring[s] to frightening life the Berlin of 1936.”
    —Publishers Weekly (starred review)
    “A multilayered action story that keeps the pulse racing while challenging the emotions.”
    —The Orlando Sentinel (FL)
    “Deaver mak[es] the period come alive. . . . The opening chapter is a classic. . . . Unforgettable.”
    —The Denver Post
    “Deaver subtly and plausibly work[s] real people into the tale. . . . It will be a big hit with fans of such Nazi-era thrillers as Philip Kerr’s Berlin Noir trilogy or Robert Harris’ Fatherland.”
    —Booklist
    Also available from Simon & Schuster Audio
    More acclaim for GARDEN OF BEASTS
    “Fresh and engaging. . . . Satisfying and entertaining.”
    —Denver Rocky Mountain News
    “Intriguing. . . . A multitude of twists, turns, and betrayals.”
    —Library Journal
    Be sure to read Jeffery Deaver’s bestselling Lincoln Rhyme novels
    “. . . Masterpieces of modern criminology.”
    —Philadelphia Daily News
    “. . . Among the most brilliant and most vulnerable of crime fiction’s heroes.”
    —New York Post
    “Wake up, Scarpetta fans—Lincoln Rhyme is here to blast you out of your stupor.”
    —Entertainment Weekly
    THE VANISHED MAN
    “A crackling thriller.”
    —Chicago Sun-Times
    “Ingeniously devious. . . . [The] plot is so crooked it could hide behind a spiral staircase. . . . Deaver delivers.”
    —People
    “Giddily entertaining. . . .”
    —Publishers Weekly
    THE STONE MONKEY
    “Deaver knows how to play this game for all it’s worth.”
    —The New York Times Book Review
    “Rock-solid suspense.”
    —People
    THE EMPTY CHAIR
    “[A] pulse-racing chase. . . . Scientific smarts and psychological cunning.”
    —The New York Times Book Review
    “Outstanding. . . . When the suspense starts, the pages fly.”
    —Library Journal
    THE COFFIN DANCER
    “This is as good as it gets. . . . The Lincoln Rhyme series is simply outstanding.”
    —San Jose Mercury News
    “Intense and heart-stopping . . . leaves readers gasping at the stunning climax.”
    —Booklist
    Also by Jeffery Deaver—don’t miss these acclaimed bestsellers
    SPEAKING IN TONGUES
    “A shocker. . . .  Speaking in Tongues is like Cape Fear on steroids. . . .”
    —Los Angeles Times
    THE DEVIL’S TEARDROP
    “A fiendish suspense thriller. . . . Leaves us weak.”
    —The New York Times Book Review
    THE BLUE NOWHERE
    “High-tension wired. . . . Deaver . . . fills every keystroke with suspense.”
    —People

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To the memories of Hans and Sophie Scholl, brother and sister, executed in 1943 for anti-Nazi protests; journalist Carl von Ossietzky, awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1935 while imprisoned in Oranienburg camp; and Wilhelm Kruzfeld, a Berlin police officer who refused to let a mob destroy a synagogue during the Nazi-sponsored anti-Jewish riots known as the Night of Broken Glass . . . four people who looked at evil and said, “No.”

“[Berlin] was full of whispers. They told of illegal midnight arrests, of prisoners tortured in the S.A. barracks. . . . They were drowned by the loud angry voices of the Government, contradicting through its thousand mouths.”
    —Christopher Isherwood, Berlin Stories

I
T HE B UTTON M AN

M ONDAY, 13 J ULY, 1936

Chapter One
    As soon as he stepped into the dim apartment he knew he was dead.
    He wiped sweat off his palm, looking around the place, which was quiet as a morgue, except for the faint sounds of Hell’s Kitchen traffic late at night and the ripple of the greasy shade when the swiveling Monkey Ward fan turned its hot breath toward the window.
    The whole scene was off.
    Out of kilter . . .
    Malone was supposed to be here, smoked on booze, sleeping off a binge. But he wasn’t. No bottles of corn anywhere,