One way to keep a series alive is to make it a continuous story, to be sliced off like a party sandwich. That's what Savarin seems to be doing in his predictable but tasty Müller and Pappenheim thrillers. A month after the pair saved an elite American unit's commander from being killed by a secret organization called the Semper in Hunter's Rain
(2004), Hauptkommisar Jens Müller, a rich German cop who drives a Porsche Turbo, and his sharp-tongued, overweight working-class assistant, Pappenheim, are still hot on the trail of the Semper, which has worked its way into all aspects of German life, and plan to attack it with full force. As Müller picks up more reasons to believe that the Semper killed his parents in a fake plane accident when he was a child, he and Pappi find that the plotters don't plan on sitting back and letting their fates overtake them. How much longer Savarin keeps up his sandwich-making probably depends on his imagination and the interest of readers who still like their thrillers to be part of a grand old tradition. (June)
