A serial killer is at lose in Berlin in the middle of a snow-bound December in 1939, as the Nazi party tightens its grip on power. Inspector Horst Schenke of the Kriminal Polizei is assigned the case by a senior Gestapo official: does the Party have something to hide? And what is the involvement of the Abwehr, the MI6 of the Reich?
A classic murder mystery with plenty of thriller action and a wonderfully literal Gestapo officer who reminded me of Jasper de Zoet in Utopia Avenue.
Selected quotes:
- "The boughs of the trees were laden with ice and snow, c learly visible against the night sky, so that Schenke was reminded of a photographic negative, as if the world was the opposite of what it should be." (Ch 5)
- "It's like the country has been taken over by the kind of people who underperformed at school, and refused to read anything other than the headlines of the gutter press." (Ch 16)
- "He was reminded of the secretive Christian sects in Roman times who lived under the shadow of the crosses onto which those who were discovered were nailed and left to die." (Ch 25)
- "What, then, was the point of being a policeman when criminals ruled?" (Ch 25)
April 2022; 418 pages
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