A novel that exudes the grim time and place of the divided and contested ruin of 1948 Berlin.
‘La Guerre est finie,’ as they say. Gregor Reinhardt is no longer a Wehrmacht investigator, but rather a police officer amid the divided rubble of Berlin, 1948. The police service is awash with returned German communist exiles inserted by the Soviets during the months immediately after Der Untergang before the Western Allies made it to Berlin. Like their Nazi predecessors, the Reds suppose crime is a product of the attributes of individuals. Whereas for Nazis it was race, for the Communists it is class. In neither case is investigation or evidence necessary. Nazi justice was to find the nearest üntermensch, beat them to death and the crime is solved. Communist justice is to find the nearest bourgeoisie and do likewise. Case closed.
In this Red Sea are some honest officers but they survive by keeping their heads down, and of course the opportunists who are always with us and they follow the Red wind as long as it blows.
Gregor is assigned to homicide which is housed in the American sector and that gives him a little leverage, thanks to a deftly inserted backstory. My usual irritation at backstories is because they do not develop either plot or character, but in this instance the backstory develops plot nicely.
When the murders occur, Gregor’s superiors obstruct the investigation as required by the krimi playbook. But, strangely the Soviets seem to want an investigation as Gregor learns through a back channel, but they do not wish to broadcast that. Strangely, the Americans are reluctant but have no wish to advertise this fact.
There are some well realised scenes when a Soviet officer talks to Gregor who also debates conditions with the American angel who got him out of a POW camp and into the Berlin police. Within each monolith are many fissures.
The victims killed in the same manner pile up and the link among them seems to have been service in a special command of the Luftwaffe. Thin ice ahead! Gregor has to tread lightly.
He does much back and forth through the rubble that is Berlin, and I followed some of it on an old online map. He meets disconsolate war widows, bitter Luftwaffe veterans, cynical street orphans, callous local police officers, an enthusiastic archivist from Paris, deals with the indomitable Frau Dommes in his office, marvels at the resilience of Frau Meissiner, his landlady, and many other characters, like the thug Fischer.
Berlin, 1947
That the trail was going to lead to some Nazi evil was a foregone conclusion. But that was moderated by the plot complication mentioned below, though it diluted the focus on the evil.
I particularly liked the time Gregor spent in the archives, using that mountain of paper to ruminate on the war and the place of individuals in it.
A couple of quibbles, first Nemesis is just too omniscient. He is a near übermensch. Moreover, Nemesis’s amalgamation of two groups of victims made no sense, but it was a means to complicate the plot.
Finally, could a unit of maximum Aryan Brandenburgeren really pass themselves off as Arabs? Really! I would have liked some coda with the unseen Lena. This is the second in the series I have read.
Luke McCallin
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