Review of Philip Kerr's The Lady from Zagreb

The Lady from Zagreb, by Philip Kerr (G. P. Putnam's Sons, April 7, 2015)

A good detective should always be honest, but not too honest

So says Bernie Gunther to a visiting Swiss detective (and crime fiction author) as Bernie produces from his pockets a bottle of pear schnapps and SS-etched glasses that he lifted from an stately home where he'd been a speaker at an international crime conference. Considering that the stately home had itself been appropriated from its owner by the SS, Bernie's pilfering seems only fair.

This latest 10th adventure of Bernie Gunther, cynical German gumshoe, takes place mostly in 1942, in Germany, Switzerland and Yugoslavia, with some flash-forwards to 1956 on the Côte d'Azur. The 1942 Bernie is back home in Berlin from his time in Smolensk as an investigator with the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. (Yes, there really was such a thing––and no, of course the Nazis didn't investigate their own genocidal atrocities.)

Coming back to Berlin is a lot better than being in Smolensk, but it has its drawbacks. Bernie, no fan of public speaking, is coerced into giving that address at the international criminal conference. He's also once again summoned by Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (whom Bernie calls––though rarely aloud––"Mahatma Propagandhi" or "Joey the Crip") to do a little job for him. The job is to travel to Yugoslavia to get a message to a certain Father Ladislaus from his long-lost daughter, who is now up-and-coming film starlet Dalia Dresner.

Kerr says he based the Dalia character in part
on film star––and inventor––Hedy Lamarr

Goebbels, whose serial lusts are legendary, has a yen for Dalia. Both Goebbels and Dalia are married and she has resisted his advances, even risking her future at the UFA film studios, which Goebbels controls. Goebbels insists Bernie should do this favor, thinking that Dalia's gratitude will make her agree to be Goebbels's latest inamorata. When Bernie meets Dalia, he's immediately smitten too and will do whatever she asks. Yes, even go to Yugoslavia. That's a tall order during the war, when the Nazis' allies, the Croatian Ustaše, were bloodily laying waste to Serbs and Jews, and every bend in the road could lead to an ambush by various flavors of partisans. Bernie's visit to Yugoslavia is brief, but possibly an even worse experience than Smolensk.

The plot thickens back in Berlin, with Goebbels "asking" Bernie to go to Switzerland on another Dalia-related errand, and SS spymaster Walter Schellenberg adding a side job that turns into a spy/counterspy drama worthy of a James Bond film. If you've read the Bernie Gunther books, you'll know that no matter how unrelated Bernie's two jobs appear, their paths will converge at some point, and the meeting will be explosive.

Kerr wasn't quite as skillful as usual in bringing his two story threads together. The Swiss story was far stronger, involving Swiss neutrality and threats against it, and I found myself wishing Bernie could have spent more time in Zurich, getting into trouble with spies of various stripes, including agents of the OSS, the predecessor to the current CIA. The trip to Yugoslavia was almost perfunctory, despite its blood-drenched horror. And Kerr, who normally weaves history seamlessly into his story, has the convoluted saga of Yugoslavia during World War II presented by using Dalia as a mouthpiece, in a lengthy and painfully stilted explanation to Bernie.

Despite the unevenness of the two plot threads and some clunkiness in exposition, fans of Bernie
Gunther should enjoy their time with this entry. Bernie, the German Sam Spade, is his usual acerbic self. More than a little ground down by nearly 10 years of coexisting with Nazis, he's still open to love––or a reasonable facsimile. As always, he's the bottom-line reason for reading this series. And here's a teaser: we learn the background to a bit of Bernie's personal history that I've wondered about for years.

It's also good to read that Bernie will be back in 2016.  In his Author's Note, Kerr writes that the next novel in the series will be titled The Other Side of Silence.

Review of Joseph Kanon's Leaving Berlin

Leaving Berlin by Joseph Kanon (Atria Books, March 3, 2015)

I've always enjoyed Joseph Kanon's books, which are thrillers set in various places around the world, but all taking place shortly after World War II.  Kanon mines that same ground over and over because it's one of the richest veins of material you could ever hope to find.  The war has ended, but not the fighting. It is just a different kind of battle, and the players shifted around. No more Allies fighting Nazis; now it's the Cold War, with Berlin being dead center in the new conflict.

Alex Meier, Leaving Berlin's protagonist, had been a celebrated young novelist in Germany in the 1930s.  Alex was a Social Democrat with a Jewish father, and neither one of those were good things to be once the Nazis took over. But he was friends with the younger members of the powerful von Bernuth family, and their father got Alex out of the country before it was too late.  Alex's parents never got out.

Alex made a new home in the US, married and had a son. Then, along came the Red Scare and, suddenly, a young German socialist was in danger from the government yet again. To avoid being deported from the US permanently and losing all contact with his son, Alex agrees to act as a US government agent by returning to Berlin for a time; in particular to the Soviet Occupied Zone, where several other leftist German exiles had returned, the most prominent being playwright Berthold Brecht. Alex's assignment is to provide information about his friends in the new Germany, and if he does a good job, the promise is that he can return to the US.

Berlin in 1949 was about the most interesting place imaginable. Interesting in the usual sense, but also in the sense of the old curse, "May you live in interesting times."  The city was divided into four occupation zones for each of the Allied powers, but there was no Berlin Wall yet.  Tensions between the Soviets and the other Allies were increasing by the day, as the Soviets tried to squeeze the Allies out of the city, deep within the eastern half of the country, which the Soviets planned as a satellite state.

Along with the political and military Cold War, there was also a so-called Cultural Cold War. The Soviets and the West vied for superiority in literature, music, theater and all the other arts. The Soviets lavished privileges on artists who could burnish the reputation of communism around the world. Alex, who is well remembered as a novelist, is welcomed warmly in the Soviet Occupied Zone and treated as a valued member of the new socialist dream society. As an instantly prominent artist comrade, he can eat and drink off ration at the Kulturbund and is awarded a nice apartment all to himself, with a view to the street rather than the drab rear.

Alex quickly finds that Berlin is full of secrets and lies, with danger and betrayal all around him. This is no longer the city of his youth. His childhood home is rubble and his old and new friends may not be what they seem. Alex's reconnecting with his old love, Irene von Bernuth, who is now the mistress of a high-level Soviet military man, excites his US intelligence contacts, but it endangers Alex's heart and much more. What was supposed to be a quick and easy job soon turns deadly dangerous, and Alex must rely on his wits to save himself and those he still feels loyal to.

I've read a lot of espionage thrillers, but this one has one of the most satisfyingly twisty-turny plots ever; enough to make your head spin and heart pound. Along with the complex and exciting plot, Kanon delivers a large cast of realistic characters, starting with Alex, but also including childhood friends (especially Irene von Bernuth), Soviet officers, Alex's minder from the Party, intelligence contacts and more. Kanon also has a gift for invoking the atmosphere of the ruined city and what Berliners do to survive in the new reality.

This is Kanon's second book set in Berlin, with the first being The Good German (2002), made into a movie starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. This is a very different story, but also one that would make a terrific film. I feel sure of that, because Kanon's powerfully evocative writing turned it into a story that played out in my head as a movie while I was reading.

Another particular strength of the book is the focus on the return to East Berlin of so many members of the cultural and intellectual elite who missed their homeland and were true believers in the communist cause. They included Brecht and writers like Arnold Zweig, Anna Seghers and Stefan Heym.

Initially celebrated and given privileges not available to others in the workers' state, the returnees who spent the Nazi years in the West, rather than in Moscow, soon found their situations changed. Stalin and his henchmen began an "anti-cosmopolitan" campaign in 1950, targeting those who had spent time in the West. Many were expelled from the Communist Party, imprisoned on trumped-up charges and worse. If you'd like to read more on the subject, you might try Edith Anderson's Love In Exile: An American Writer's Memoir of Life in Divided Berlin (Steerforth Press, 1999). Or, to read about Bertold Brecht's tumultuous history with his native country, as well as his friends, colleagues and lovers, check out a new book by Pamela Katz: The Partnership: Brecht, Weill, Three Women, and Germany on the Brink (Nan A. Talese, January 6, 2015).

Note: Thanks to the publisher for providing a review copy, via NetGalley.

Review of John Lawton's Then We Take Berlin

Then We Take Berlin, by John Lawton
(Atlantic Monthly Press; September 3, 2013)

John Lawton is on my top-five list of contemporary authors, so I was excited when I heard he had created a new protagonist, John Wilfrid Holderness. That sounds like a posh name, but he's known by most people as Joe Wilderness––a much better fit to this character.

Joe is a London East End wide boy, a chancer who lives on his wits and guile. That's all the more true when his mother is killed in the Blitz, found dead, ensconced on a barstool with her gin still sitting in front of her. Joe's grandfather, Abner, moves Joe into an attic room at his place in Whitechapel, where Abner lives with his longtime girlfriend (and sometime prostitute), Merle. (Not that her name really is Merle, but that's a good Hollywood-sounding sobriquet for when she's on the game.)

Abner teaches Joe everything he knows about burglary and safe-cracking. Joe is a quick study, not just about crime, but about books, and observing people. Smart and lucky are two different things, though. Just when all the soldiers and sailors are returning home from World War II, Joe is drafted. He's about to be tossed into the punishment cells for insubordination (that's a mild name for it) during his basic training, when he's plucked out by Lieutenant Colonel Burne-Jones, who's seen Joe's IQ score. Burne-Jones sends Joe to Cambridge to learn Russian and German, and to London for individual tutoring in languages, politics and history.

Of course, Burne-Jones is training Joe to work in military intelligence, but you already figured that out. Off Joe goes to Berlin in 1946, where his job is to assess German citizens looking to get jobs in the de-Nazified country. To qualify, Germans had to fill out a form the Germans nicknamed Fragebogen, the Questions. Intelligence officers like Joe quizzed candidates over their answers to determine whether they would qualify for the prized Entlastungsschein––which the Germans called Persilschein, after Persil laundry detergent––the whiter-than-white document that proved that you're not considered an enemy or a threat.

Aside from that dull desk job, though, what an amazing time and place for a wide boy. "It was love at first sight. He and Berlin were made for each other. He took to it like a rat to a sewer." In between intelligence jobs for Burne-Jones, Joe can't resist becoming a black market seller, then increasing the stakes in his black market game, which means making ever larger and more dangerous deals; deals that involve bent Russians and dangerous crossings to the Russian sector.

But for Joe, it's not all about sussing out former Nazi bigwigs and scientists by day, and smuggling by night. At one of Berlin's nightclubs––famous in the Weimar era for using tabletop telephones and pneumatic tubes so that strangers could propose assignations––Joe meets Christina Helene von Raeder Burckhardt, known by the Brits and Yanks as Nell Breakheart. Not because she actually breaks hearts, but because she's so beautiful, inside and out, that they're lining up in hopes of getting their hearts broken. And wouldn't you know, she chooses Joe.

Yes, Joe's quip is about Hitler, who was a
Corporal in the First World War

I can't blame Nell. Joe's got that bad-boy fascination and I wanted to hang around with him for the snappy patter alone. In one of my favorite scenes, he is introduced to Nell's old friend Werner, who's no fan of the occupying forces. Werner sneers, "I do not care to sit down with the Allies, Herr Corporal." Joe answers: "Now don't you go bashin' corporals. We may be a bunch of numskulls but some of us go on to run empires that last a thousand years."

Trümmerfrauen clearing rubble

In language so vivid the scenes unreel like a half-remembered film, Lawton recreates postwar Berlin, with its ruined buildings, squalid living quarters created in cellars or apartments with shorn-off walls, crews of women who earn rations by clearing rubble in bucket lines, dirty kids harassing occupation forces servicemen for candy bars, the stink of open sewers, fear and despair, and the sweeter scents of money, graft and opportunity. I read a ton of World War II historical novels and I can't think of another one that does it with more verve.

JFK in Berlin

But the novel isn't all postwar Berlin. The bombed-out Berlin tale is bookended by the stories of Joe and Nell in the summer of 1963. You know, the summer JFK made his famous visit to Berlin. If there is some of the 1963 plot that is not quite up to snuff (and, admittedly, there is), that takes up a very small proportion of what is a dazzlingly inventive and layered story, packed with fully dimensional characters–––several of whom Lawton fans will recognize from Lawton's series of Frederick Troy novels.

I've often wondered why John Lawton hasn't gained the recognition I firmly believe he deserves. I've come to think it might be because of the book world's compulsion to categorize books and authors into easy genres and sub-genres. Lawton's books are most often classified as mystery and espionage, but neither is accurate. As Lawton once commented, they are "historical, political thrillers with a big splash of romance, wrapped up in a coat of noir." The noir comes in because, as you might have suspected, reading about Joe Wilderness, John Lawton likes to write about people on the edge, living in a world of shadowy morality. Lawton says, "I don't think there are unequivocal good guys. If there are, then they're teetering on the edge, and it's the edge, the ambivalence, that I like about espionage and spooks." Me too.

If you enjoy authors like Ian McEwan, Philip Kerr, Sebastian Faulks and William Boyd, give this book a try, along with his other novels, especially his haunting 2011 title, A Lily of the Field.

Note: I received a free review e-galley of Then We Take Berlin from NetGalley––but I loved it so much I ordered the hardcover as soon as I finished reading the galley. Versions of this review may appear on Amazon, Goodreads and other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

Review of Ferdinand von Schirach's The Collini Case

The Collini Case by Ferdinand von Schirach

When I first picked up this book, I was struck by how short it is. I estimated 40,000 words; that would make it a novella under some of the varying definitions of the word.

The Wikipedia entry for the term "novella" also notes that: "For the German writer, a novella is a fictional narrative of indeterminate length––a few pages to hundreds––restricted to a single, suspenseful event, situation, or conflict leading to an unexpected turning point (Wendepunkt), provoking a logical but surprising end." That definition fits this story perfectly.

The book begins with a dry description of the contemporary killing of 85-year-old Hans Meyer in the Brandenburg Suite at Berlin's famed Adlon Hotel. It's no mystery who killed Meyer. Fabrizio Collini, a recently retired worker at Daimler AG's Mercedes-Benz factory in Stuttgart, turns himself in immediately.

Caspar Leinen, a newly-qualified lawyer, is appointed to represent Collini in his murder trial. Only after his appointment does Leinen learn that the murder victim is his first love's grandfather, a man with whom Leinen himself spent many happy hours in his boyhood. Complicating matters further, Collini politely, but determinedly, declines to tell Leinen why he killed Meyer.

Whatever his professional ethical obligations are, Leinen feels morally compelled to do everything he can to find out why Collini killed Meyer. The results of Leinen's investigation play out in the course of the dramatic trial, and not only provide one heck of a Wendepunkt, but also raise complex questions about the nature of justice.

There is nothing sensationalistic about the treatment of the trial's turning point. The description of the trial is engrossing, and notable for the many differences in German criminal procedure from US procedure. The tone of the book is deliberate and detached; the language direct and unadorned.  Somehow, though, that gives it an almost searing effect, and I found myself still thinking about the book several weeks after reading it. Anyone who enjoys legal thrillers should find this an unusual, but satisfying and thought-provoking read.

Ferdinand von Schirach isn't a name well-known in the US, but he has two previous well-received collections of crime short stories, titled Crime and Guilt. The Collini Case, his first novel, was a sensation in Germany when it was published there in 2011.

That last name, von Schirach, might have caught your eye if you're a student of World War II history. Ferdinand is the grandson of Baldur von Schirach, the head of the Hitler Youth organization, who was convicted at Nuremberg of crimes against humanity and served 20 years in Spandau Prison. Ferdinand is a prominent criminal lawyer in Germany.

I can't say more without spoiling the book, but Ferdinand has been open about how his family's past affected his writing of this book. If you would like to read a moving essay by Ferdinand about his Vergangenheitsbewältigung (one of those wonderful German portmanteau words, meaning the process of coming to terms with the past), you can find it here (Part 1) and here (Part 2). However, it would be best that you not read this essay before reading The Collini Case.

The Collini Case will be published in the US on August 1, by Viking.

Note: The publisher provided me with an advance review copy of The Collini Case.

Review of Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die

Following a search tangent is like cutting
off a head of the Lernaean Hydra. Many
more search possibilities pop up.

Snow White Must Die by Nele Neuhaus, trans. by Steven T. Murray

Please cut me some slack today, as I give in to searchtangentitis, in which a word or idea prompts me to follow research trails that become increasingly unrelated until the original reason for searching has been lost. Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die is full of searchtangentitis triggers. Just to give you a flavor of one of the trails I followed, I researched the German fairy tale and the Brothers Grimm, of course, and from there I went to dwarfs and apple varieties, Tales of Monkey Island (Disney, who made a Snow White movie, bought LucasArts, maker of the game Monkey Island), Haiti (an island), Tonton Macoute (scary-as-hell Haitian paramilitary group), wonton soup, Great White sharks, and Henry VIII. You get the idea. Since this is Friday, and Read Me Deadly has an "all bets are off" policy on Fridays, I'll indulge my searchtangentitis by giving some starting points for research as I talk to you about Neuhaus's book.

Snow White Must Die's prologue is a dreamy, tender scene reminiscent of the fairy tale. In a hidden place, an unknown man visits a recumbent woman, whom he calls Snow White. He knows she's dead, and, judging from her stiff and leathery skin, she died years ago. (→ mummy, a list of mummy movies, Steve Martin as King Tut, Nele Neuhaus)

The scene shifts, and it's Thursday, November 6, 2008. Famous German actress Nadia von Bredow is picking up her childhood friend, Tobias Sartorius, outside the Rockenberg Correctional Facility. Now 30 years old, Tobias served a 10-year sentence for the 1997 murders of two teenage girls, Laura Wagner and Stefanie Schneeberger. Laura was his ex-girlfriend, and Stefanie was his current girlfriend when they were last seen, entering Tobias's house. Tobias claims that his memory about what happened that night is a "black hole," and the bodies were never found. He was convicted on eyewitness testimony, circumstantial evidence, and blood stains on his clothes, in his room, and in the trunk of his car. Other physical evidence was found hidden in his house, and the murder weapon was found hidden outside. (→ international homicide rate, black hole, forensic crime fiction, amnesia)

When Nadia drops off Tobias at his family home in the Taunus Mountains village of Altenhain, Tobias is shocked by what he finds. His father, Hartmut, is a wreck, and the farm is strewn with trash. Hartmut's once-thriving restaurant has closed. His parents have divorced, and his mother, Rita Cramer, lives in Bad Soden. Tobias, who had planned to stay a few days, decides to help his father by cleaning up the property. When Tobias discovers one of his father's friends has taken financial advantage of him, he vows to stay until he can figure out what happened 11 years ago. This will not be easy, because the villagers are furious that Tobias has dared to return. A campaign of harassment begins. (→ Taunus Mountains, The Wall Street Journal, musophobia, German politics)

Among the few people who are friendly are Claudius Terlinden, the most powerful man in the village, and the father of Tobias's former best friend, Lars; Terlinden's autistic son, Thies; and a 17-year-old newcomer named Amelie Fröhlich, who works at the Black Horse. Amelie is friendly with Thies, and lives with her father and stepmother in the Schneebergers' old house. Everyone notices that Amelie has an "almost spooky" resemblance to the murdered Stefanie Schneeberger, who was nicknamed Snow White. Amelie has the "same finely etched and alabaster-pale facial features, the voluptuous mouth, the dark, knowing eyes." Until Tobias's arrival, Amelie found the villagers as interesting "as a sack of rice in China." Now she's obsessed with finding out about the old murders. (→ Altenhain, autism, graffitti art, snowflakes)

While Tobias deals with village hostility and a budding romance with Nadia, two significant events happen outside of Altenhain: a backhoe operator at a long-closed airfield in Eschborn discovers human bones and a skull in an empty underground jet fuel tank, and Tobias's mother is hospitalized in a coma after she's shoved off a Bad Soden pedestrian overpass and lands on a car passing below. Investigating these two crimes are Detective Inspector Pia Kirchhoff and her superior, Detective Superintendent Oliver von Bodenstein, who soon follow the evidence to Altenhain. There, they receive little cooperation. Pia notes discrepancies in the evidence that sent Tobias to prison, but what is she to think about Tobias's guilt when Amelie disappears? Man, there is no shortage of secrets in Altenhain. (→ prehistoric brain surgery, Freud on guilt, Patricia Highsmith, "guilt"-tagged movies, BMW cars)

Snow White Must Die is a beautifully atmospheric German thriller about a search for justice, involving themes of guilt and redemption, outsiders vs. insiders, and loyalty and betrayal. The village's cultural mores are fascinating, as are the topical issues in mental health and crime. It's the fourth book in the Bodenstein-Kirchhoff series, although so far it's the only one translated into English. Translator Steven T. Murray has done an excellent job. After the flow of Scandinavian crime fiction, perhaps we'll finally see more mysteries from Germany trickling in. (→ thriller genre, atmospheric optics, outsider art)

German cops, like cops everywhere, juggle personal loyalty to each other with loyalty to the force, and demands of work and family. I liked Neuhaus's cops. Bodenstein is the son of a countess (when he is wounded, Pia laughs to see his blood is red, rather than blue) and father of three children. Pia says he's Cary Grant handsome and charming. (Does Bodenstein remind you at all of Dorothy L. Sayers's Lord Peter Wimsey or Elizabeth George's Thomas Lynley?) Bodenstein would be happier if Cosima, his movie-producer wife, stuck to Kinder, Küche, Kirche. Their relationship has been strained since their Mallorca vacation was interrupted by Bodenstein's job. Bodenstein is now miserable because he suspects that Cosima is having an affair. Pia also has distractions: Bodenstein isn't his usual self, her ex-husband is in a messy spot, and her farm remodeling plans were denied a permit. Despite these issues, the 41-year-old Pia is happy. Her lover, Christoph Sander, is a zoo director whose smile "always triggered in Pia the almost irrepressible desire to throw herself into his arms." (→ Cary Grant movies, German beer, Life of Pi)

I also enjoyed a peek at Germany's law enforcement and legal systems. A couple of things struck me: for murder, there's no statute of limitations in the US, but there's a 30-year statute of limitations in Germany. When those human bones are discovered in the old airfield fuel tank, careful forensic analysis to determine how long it's been since death is crucial. And, I was surprised that Tobias could study to become a locksmith while in prison; would that be allowed here? (→ statute of limitations, the Wright brothers, explore human anatomy, list of films featuring extraterrestrials)

Finally, Neuhaus repeatedly uses the Snow White colors⎯"white as snow, red as blood, black as ebony"⎯to gorgeous effect in descriptions of the winter settings, names (e.g. the Ebony Club, Schnee[snow]berger), and characters' appearances, emotions (e.g., black despair, white rage, red embarrassment), and relationships. Scenes alternate between the villagers in Altenhain and the investigating cops, but there's no trouble following the action. The plot is timely and twists smartly. Although the final quarter could have been trimmed, the suspense is well handled, with skillful misdirection and foreshadowing. Nele Neuhaus's Snow White Must Die was already an international best-seller when it was published by Minotaur Books in 2012. It's no wonder. I enjoyed it, and I'm hoping for more.

Review of Philip Kerr's A Man Without Breath

A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr

It's 1943, and Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide cop, is now an investigator for the Wehrmacht War Crimes Bureau. Yep, you read those last four words right. During World War II, there actually was a German organization for investigating war crimes. Bernie, however, with all the cynicism and black humor of a Berliner, is keenly aware of the absurdity of the Bureau's practice of turning a blind eye to the systematic torture and murder of Jews, Gypsies, communists, Slavs, homosexuals and other designated enemies of the Reich. Instead, the Bureau focuses on investigating war crimes by the Allies and, occasionally, one-off criminal acts by German soldiers––like rape, murder and torture committed without benefit of an officer's order.

Bernie is sent to Smolensk, then precariously held by the Germans, when corpses are discovered buried in the nearby Katyń Forest. Those bodies turn out to be Polish army officers, executed by a shot to the back of the head, and the more the German troops dig in the forest, the more bodies they find.

Nazi Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels (whom Bernie likes to call "Mahatma Propagandhi") spots a potential publicity coup: show the world that this massacre was perpetrated by the Soviets and drive a wedge between the democratic Allies and the USSR. Goebbels orders Bernie to coordinate an international commission's visit to Smolensk to witness the digging and autopsies and, of course, to help the publicity along.

Bernie's workload becomes heavier when two German soldiers are brutally murdered late one night after a visit to the local brothel in Smolensk, and other murders follow. Bernie's various investigations force him into contact with a number of Wehrmacht officers, nearly all of whom are aristocrats and seem to be related by blood, marriage or social connection. This is a double whammy for Bernie, who dislikes both military authority and class superiority. Naturally, he refuses to show any deference to the officers, even including those whom he figures out are part of the various plots to assassinate Hitler.

Bernie's insubordination and wisecracks have a tendency to make the local command less than cooperative with his investigations; not that this is a new phenomenon for Bernie. After knowing him only a couple of days, one member of the visiting committee says: "Trouble is what defines you, Gunther. Without trouble you have no meaning." True, but I like Gunther's own view of himself: "[F]or the last ten years[,] [t]here's hardly been a day when I haven't asked myself if I could live under a regime I neither understood nor desired. . . . For now, being a policeman seems like the only right thing I can do."

This is what the Bernie Gunther series is all about. Philip Kerr is a master at portraying the flawed hero doing the best he can in a corrupt and perverted time and place. And you sure can't get much more corrupt and perverted than Nazi Germany and World War II.

During this now nine-volume series, Kerr puts Bernie at ground zero at some of the notorious landmarks of the time. In this book, there are several, including the discovery of the Katyń Forest Massacre, a real event in which the Soviet NKVD killed over 14,000 Polish military officers as part of its "decapitation" policy, which systematically obliterated those who might lead resistance against them, including aristocrats, intellectuals and military elites. Kerr also includes references to the Gleiwitz Incident, the faked Polish attack on a German radio station, which the Nazis devised to justify their 1939 invasion of Poland; the Rosenstrasse protest, which I describe in a historical note below; some of the previously-mentioned officer class's attempts to assassinate Adolf Hitler; and the horrific medical experiments on communists carried out by fascist doctors in Civil War-era Spain.

Dramatization of the Rosenstrasse Protest

I read a lot of World War II fiction, and a common mistake is for the author to put every bit of his or her
research on the page, which often kills the pace and flavor of the story. Having read all of the Bernie Gunther series, I can say that Philip Kerr never makes that mistake. His knowledge of World War II history is prodigious, and he works it seamlessly into his compelling fictional stories. Just read the Author's Note at the end of the book and marvel at all the real events and characters he's blended into this story without the least scent of a musty textbook creeping in.

I recommend A Man Without Breath to anyone who enjoys World War II fiction or books about characters trapped in morally compromising circumstances.  The book will be published in the US by Putnam on April 16. (I read the UK edition, which was published by Quercus on March 14.)

Historical Note: An intriguing event Kerr describes is the Rosenstrasse protest. In March 1943, the Nazis rounded up the last 10,000 Jews left in Berlin (at least those not in hiding), with the intent to transport them and declare Berlin judenfrei. About 1700 of these, the ones who were married to Aryans, were separated and placed in temporary holding in the Jewish community center building on Rosenstrasse. For a week, the wives and families of the Rosenstrasse prisoners demonstrated outside, loudly demanding the release of their loved ones, despite SS soldiers' threats to arrest and even shoot the demonstrators. Amazingly, at the end of the week, the prisoners were released, by Goebbels' order, and nearly all of them survived the war.

This event shows the sensitivity of the regime to bad publicity and forces us to ask what horrors might have been avoided if only the German people had risen up against Nazi actions earlier. For a thorough and fascinating history of the Rosenstrasse protest, I recommend Nathan Stoltzfus's Resistance of the Heart: Intermarriage and the Rosenstrasse Protest in Nazi Germany.

Note: Versions of this review may appear on Goodreads, Amazon and other reviewing sites under my usernames there.

Grimm Reviews

Johann and Wilhelm Grimm

November 20, 2012 marked the 200th anniversary of publication of the Grimm brothers' Children's and Household Tales, a grisly and scholarly little collection of folk tales culled from German and European folk history. I had the fortune––or misfortune––to read fairly early versions of these stories as a child. They scared me silly and some made me cry; hardly suitable bedtime reading for children. Over the years, the original collection has been gentled down and the violence edited out, first by the brothers in subsequent editions, and then by many other writers. Disney finally tolled the death knell for several of these fascinating, but unsettling, ancient folk tales by turning them into sweet confections suitable for the very youngest reader, if possibly dangerous for diabetics.

The original Cinderella

In the Grimms' Cinderella, for example, the stepmother cuts off her daughter's toes in order to make the glass slipper fit. Not until Cinderella's bird friends point out that the slipper is full of blood does the dense prince realize that something is amiss. And at the wedding of Cinderella and the prince, the birds peck out the eyes of the wicked stepmother and sisters, striking them blind. A far cry from the bibbity-bobbity-boo, wish-upon-a-star tale of today.

Gretel shoving the witch into the oven

The best I can say of Hansel and Gretel's parents is that they weren't cannibals, like many characters in the Grimm stories, but being abandoned by your parents in the forest to starve or be eaten by animals is not a happy thing for any child to contemplate. This folk tale is believed to date back to the Great Famine in the early 14th century, and may be truer than we like to think. Who was crueler: the father who abandoned his children to certain death or the witch who fattened Hansel up for her dinner and enslaved his sister? I've never answered that question to my own satisfaction.

In Craig Russell's Brother Grimm, someone is committing a series of murders based on a modern novel in which the writer casts Johann Grimm as a madman and serial killer who acted out the stories he published in Children's and Household Tales. I don't usually read violent serial killer stories––they disturb me more than scare me––but this story line was different and the tie-back to the fairy tales creepily irresistible.

The shabbily dressed girl was found carefully posed on a beach, blue eyes open to the sky. A note folded into her hand read "Now I am found. My name is Paula Ehlers. I live at Buschwager Weg, Harkesheide, Norderstedt. I have been underground and now it is time for me to return home."  She had been strangled, but not otherwise molested. Paula Ehlers had been missing from her ordinary, loving, middle-class family for over three years. When her parents did not recognize the body as that of their daughter, Kriminalhauptcommissar Jan Fabel of the crack Hamburg Murder Squad feared that he was up against another cruel psychotic killer, like the one who had butchered a member of his team the previous year. He was right.

Infinity Mirror Room by Yayoi Kusama at the Tate Gallery

This is a remarkably convoluted tale that mirrors  a contemporary fictional book that expands on a volume of ancient folk tales. Each murder offers some clue to the next if the police are quick enough to spot it, and each mirrors one of the Grimm brothers' folk tales. The point of view shifts from the police to the murderer to the victims, adding to the bedazzlement and confusion. While hindsight shows that the author has strewn clues throughout, so much is going on in the story that I overlooked most of them. The conclusion offers a grisly "Aha" moment that ties the whole thing together perfectly. A creepy and disturbing procedural very worthy of the name Grimm, it definitely is not bedtime reading.

Lenny Henry as Chef

The use of German titles and words throughout the book was somewhat distracting, and at first led me to think Brother Grimm was originally published in German, but no translator is listed. I could have done with fewer Kriminaloberkommissars and Spurensicherungsteams; those long compound words make my eyes cross. The most amusing cross cultural quirk is that Fabel's staff all call him "Chef"––German, presumably, for "Chief." As a result, actor Lenny Henry as the irascible star of the Britcom series Chef kept popping into my mind while reading the book. A different mood entirely than the author intended, I am sure!

Craig Russell's work is apparently better known in Europe than in the US, and has been translated into 27 languages. He has written two series: the Lennox noir books, set in 1950s underworld Glasgow, and the contemporary Jan Fabel series, set in Hamburg. Brother Grimm is the second in this series. He speaks fluent German, and has made a study of post-WWII Germany which is apparent in his knowledge of the city of Hamburg. He lives in Perthshire, Scotland.

His books have won several international awards, and he is the only non-German to have won an honorary Police Star from the Hamburg Police for his books. Brother Grimm was nominated for a Crime Writers Association Gold Dagger Award in 2007.