This is a tough, violent thriller which illustrates the chaos in Germany in 1943. Suffering setbacks in the war and severe shortages, Berlin is in the middle of a rushed ‘cleansing’ of the Jews with thousands being removed each night. The desperation of the persecuted and what they will do to survive is coupled with corruption and greed within the Gestapo, police and SS. Forged bank notes are found stuffed into the mouths of brutally flayed and mutilated bodies. This is definitely not for the squeamish, with graphic detail of violence and sex. It is a wordy, long, depressing read, a thriller for the hardened addict; demanding and clever.
Berlin 1943. August Schlegel lives in a world full of questions with no easy answers. Why is he being called out on a homicide case when he works in financial crimes? Why did the old Jewish soldier with an Iron Cross shoot the block warden in the eye then put a bullet through his own head? Why does Schlegel persist with the case when no one cares because the Jews are all being shipped out anyway? And why should Eiko Morgen, wearing the dreaded black uniform of the SS, turn up and say he has been assigned to work with him? Corpses, dressed with fake money, bodies flayed beyond recognition: are these routine murders committed out of rage or is someone trying to tell them something... A taut, gripping and darkly menacing novel set in wartime Berlin. For fans of Robert Harris, David Peace and Joseph Kanon.
'Conjuring a wartime Berlin where atrocities get lost against a ground of escalating Holocaust and crumbling rationales, Chris Petit's nerve-wracking S.S. procedural nurses a dread that penetrates right to the marrow. An appalling, beautifully-lit abyss' Alan Moore
Author
About Chris Petit
Chris Petit is an internationally renowned author and filmmaker once described by Le Mondeas the Robespierre of English cinema. His films include the now definitive Radio On (1979) and have been the subject of several foreign retrospectives. He has written a trio of acclaimed "beyond black" political thrillers covering a serial killer operating in sectarian Northern Ireland (The Psalm Killer), dirty money in world war 2 (The Human Pool) and terror, arms trading and the bombing of a civilian aircraft (The Passenger).
