Defending Britta Stein by Ronald Balson

 

Catherine Lockhart has a challenging case to defend.  Her client is an elderly Danish woman who is being sued for slander.  She painted on the alleged victim's restaurant words like 'Traitor' and 'Collaborator'.  The man who owns the restaurant is being feted as a hero of the Danish resistance to Nazi Germany during World War II.  Britta, the accused, admits she painted the words but claims there is no crime because what she wrote is true.  

Catherine takes on the case but knows that the only way she will win Britta's case is if, indeed, she can prove that Olga, the restaurant owner, was not a hero but a collaborator who far from helping Danish Jewish families, turned them in to the Gestapo.  Catherine's husband, Liam, is an investigator and he goes to Denmark to try to substantiate Britta's claims.  In the meantime, Britta has been hospitalized and the case is in jeopardy on another front as she may not live to have her day in court.

This is the sixth novel in the Catherine Lockhart and Liam Taggert series.  Readers will discover much information about how Denmark was treated by Germany during World War II.  When the Gestapo decided to round up the entire Jewish population and send them to a concentration camp, the Danish population rallied around their Jewish friends and helped them escape to Sweden and other countries that offered asylum.  More than ninety-five percent of the Jewish population were able to escape before they were rounded up.  This is also an interesting legal thriller and is recommended to both readers of World War II novels and those interested in legal cases.