The Night Gate

The Night Gate is the final installment of Peter May's The Enzo Files series.  I have loved this series since it began and hate to see it end but I understand that authors need variety in their writing to keep it crisp. 

The publisher's summary:

"In a sleepy French village, the body of a man shot through the head is disinterred by the roots of a fallen tree.  A week later a famous art critic is viciously murdered in a nearby house.  The deaths occurred more than seventy years apart.  Asked by a colleague to inspect the site of the former, forensics expert Enzo MacLeod quickly finds himself embroiled in the investigation of the latter.  Two extraordinary narratives are set in train - one historical, unfolding in the treacherous wartime years of Occupied France; the other contemporary, set in the autumn of 2020 as France re-enters Covid lockdown. 

Tasked by the exiled General Charles de Gaulle to keep the world's most famous painting out of Nazi hands after the fall of France in 1940, 28-year-old Georgette Signal finds herself swept along by the tide of history.  Following in the wake of DaVinci's Mona Lisa as it is moved from chateau to chateau by the Louvre, she finds herself just one step ahead of two German art experts sent to steal it for rival patrons - Hitler and Goring. What none of them know is that the Louvre itself has taken exceptional measures to keep the painting safe, unwittingly setting in train a fatal sequence of events extending over seven decades.

The Night Gate spans three generations, taking us from war-torn London, the Outer Hebrides of Scotland, Berlin and Vichy France, to the deadly enemy facing the world in 2020."

I was disappointed in this novel.  There were many passages of writing that were not central to the solving of the crime.  For instance, there was a 40 page section on the military training of women who were going to be dropped into Nazi held France. In addition, the relationship of the characters who were mentioned in the beginning of the book was not explained.  I knew from past books in the series that they were related but could not remember exactly how.  I think the author should have explained who the characters were and what made them tick. There was no development of the characters during the story either so I expected a tighter plot.  I got neither.  As far as the settings descriptions are concerned, I did not feel that I was in Scotland, London, France or Berlin. In the earlier books in the series you could see the Scottish Enzo's semi-assimilation in France where he lived.

What a disappointing end to a great series.  2 out of 5 stars.