This is a readable book, but even at 500+ pages, it tries to
do too much.
It is most satisfactory as a credible recreation of life in
Berlin immediately after the end of the war, a city in ruins, recently
terrorised by Russian troops licensed to rape, and now coming back to some kind
of life – occupying forces, arrests, tension, black markets, prostitution, and
places for the troops to drink and dance. I get the feeling that Joseph Kanon
has read all the history books.
It is also good in recreating the rapid political shifts which
soon consigned the Nazis to the last war, and made Russia into America’s Number
One Enemy. That meant, among other things, deciding to ignore the Nazi pasts of
individuals deemed useful to the USA – Kanon picks on von Braun’s rocket
scientists and makes one of them central to his novel.
The novel is unsatisfactory when it hands us the chases and
shoot outs and hand to hand combat deemed essential to a good thriller. These
have the feel of those pitiful trailers for violent American movies, featuring
bullet- and bomb-proof heroes, which make a visit to a mainstream cinema such
an unpleasant experience. When you write a novel you may indeed hope that
someone will make a film of it, but you spoil the novel if you start writing a
film script instead.
Likewise, the one long Sex Scene doesn’t belong here. I like
sex but the sex scene isn’t sexy and, actually, isn’t appropriate to what is
being worked out between Jake and Lena. It’s a stand alone scene which is out
of place.
To end more positively, the exploration of moral dilemmas
and moral compromises under totalitarian regimes is good and rarely
heavy-handed. There isn't always a simple answer to the question, Who are the bad guys? - even in the world of the Holocaust. There are complex cases presented and pursued in an interesting
fashion – Gunther, Professor Brandt, for example
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