Dr. Mabuse, by Norbert Jacques -- pure, unadulterated pulpy goodness.

9780988306271
Bruin Books, 2015
originally published 1921 as Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler
translated by Lillian A. Clare (1923)

On the deck of a ship traveling between his home and Lake Constance in Switzerland, the author, Norbert Jacques,  happened to sit across from a man who, as David Kalat notes in his The Strange Case of Dr. Mabuse (2005), "never moved, never spoke," and caused Jacques to feel "anxious, afraid." There was just something about the man which "cut to the core of Jacques' being,"  that made him not only want to flee, but to also wonder "What was it about this man that exuded some power?"   The journalist in Jacques made him scrutinize this man carefully, studying "his eyes, his forehead, his stature."  It came down to one question for Jacques:

"Was he a hero, or a villain?" 

According to Kalat,

"In this mystery man, who sat motionless and silent all the while, Norbert Jacques read all that was wrong with modern-day Germany"

and on his return home he sat down to "hammer out" Dr. Mabuse der Spieler in a mere fourteen days. It would sell 100,000 copies in its first year, and would go on to sell over a half million copies, making it  one of the bestsellers of its day.  (16)  Kalat says about this book that it depicts

"a criminal Führer who exploits social decay to his private advantage. Under a variety of disguises and assumed names, he has broken free of the traditional class divisions and invaded the previously insulated enclaves of the decadent upper class." (14)

Despite the title, however, the central focus is on the character of the public prosecutor Wenk.  Just as an FYI, Lillian Clare wrote in 1923 that Wenk's actual position was that of Staatsanwalt  word  for which it "is almost impossible to find an English rendering that conveys its full meaning," but for our purposes here we'll continue on with public prosecutor, or as he's also known, the state attorney.   Jacques sets his story in his present-day Weimar Germany, a time during which Wenk believes the nation is "diseased and rotten." It is a time during which money

"was a key that opened all doors, the wearing of a fur coat could conceal any calling, and a diamond scarf-pin shed luster on any character. A man could go into whatsoever company he desired." 

In fact, it is in a gambling club that the novel opens, with a game of vingt-et-un with unlimited stakes.  It is also here that we meet Dr. Mabuse, who is a man of many disguises with seemingly unlimited powers of suggestion that can make his victims do pretty much anything he wishes.  We first see him in action during this game, as one of the players, who is "not really a reckless player" begins to play badly and takes "unreasonable risks" that cause him to lose.  Afterwards, he remembers very little of what had happened during the game, and can't even remember that he was the one who brought the man to whom he had lost to the club.    Some two weeks later, "the circles to whom the life of the day is only a wearisome burden till the hour of play arrives" share stories about the stranger who "simply loaded himself with money wherever he chanced to play," drawing the attention of the public prosecutor, who believes that these are not isolated events, but part of a much a bigger pattern, even though people in the clubs could swear that no wrongdoing had taken place.  He gets his own chance to play against "The Professor," aka Mabuse in yet another disguise, at which point Wenk gets his own taste of Mabuse's immense powers and a sense of just how dangerous this man is.   However, when the public prosecutor is knocked out and his belongings are stolen, including his notebook with all of the information he's gathered about the case, the real game of cat-and-mouse between the two begins.

While the pursuit is on, we learn much about Mabuse, including the fact that he plans to use his monetary gains from gambling, drug smuggling, human trafficking and other crimes to realize his dream of establishing an empire in "the primeval forests of Brazil," where he plans to be the absolute ruler of the Empire of Citopomar.   He is

"self-sufficing. What were men to him? He scattered them at will. Yonder, however, in the future, in Citopomar, there would be none who could oppose him."

Wenk's efforts in trying to catch Mabuse take on a greater sense of urgency as people around him are  murdered, but when Mabuse falls for and puts in his power a woman who happens to be the object of Wenk's own affection, the Countess Told, Wenk pulls out all the stops to find and stop him.  As I've said to a few people, Mabuse's powers out-Svengali Svengali, but on some level he is quite aware of his true inner self. He tells the Countess at one point that he is a "werewolf," that he "sucks man's blood."  As he says,

"Every day my hatred burns up all the blood in my veins, and every night I fill them again by sucking the blood of some human being. If men caught me, they would tear me into little bits." 

  Mabuse, however, has no intention of being caught.

from the film by Fritz Lang, at Fandor

 While I wouldn't call Dr. Mabuse great literature, it is great fun, and it also gives a glimpse into the decadence the Weimar era is known for.  The cat-and-mouse game isn't a simple one; Wenk will find himself beyond frustrated as he gets close but realizes that Mabuse seems to have all the luck.  Then there are a couple of scenes that employ some crazy inventions that Ian Fleming would have been proud of.  But it is best as a look at the "diseased and rotten" society Wenk speaks of.  The gambling clubs are here the very seat of decadence -- in chapter seven, for example,  Wenk and his companions find themselves at a gambling establishment known as the "Go-ahead Institute," where in case of a police raid, a black knob can be pushed that does away with gambling apparatus, turning instead into a decadent club complete with a

"quartette of nude twelve-year-old children were to be seen dancing, upon a new stage, to the strains of fiddles and harps"

 with a "change of programme every week..."  Yikes!

Read at a time when I desperately needed fluff, the book kept me entertained for hours (I read it straight through, actually without putting it down), of course rooting for Wenk the entire time to take down Dr. Mabuse and save the Countess.  This is the stuff of pure unadulterated pulp, but here with purpose.  Even if you don't care about the Weimar era, it's still a good, fast-paced read that will keep you turning pages.

I'd recommend it to serious pulp readers who aren't looking for fine literature but rather a good time.  I can only imagine reading this book in its original serialized form -- my sweet pulpy goodness-loving  self would  have had a field day as each episode came to some sort of cliffhanger and I eagerly awaited the next installment.

Babylon Berlin, by Volker Kutscher

9781250187048
Picador, 2018
originally published as
  Der Nasse Fisch. Gereon Rath erster Fall, 2007
translated by Niall Seller
423 pp

paperback

Read earlier this month.  Actually, Babylon Berlin is a book I didn't even know existed until I watched the Netflix series with this title a few weeks back.  When I saw that it came from a book, I knew I had to read it.  I also have the second one, The Silent Death, sitting here but it will have to wait until I return from vacation.  Speaking of the Netflix series, anyone planning to read this book should know right up front that the book is not the series -- they are two very different entities, so a word of warning:  don't expect the novel to be a mirror to the television show.

If you don't make comparisons in your head as you go along, giving the book a chance to speak for itself,  this first installment of the series featuring Gereon Rath makes for a pretty darn good read.  It is set in 1929 Berlin, during the waning years of the rather decadent Weimar period, and is our introduction to Inspector Gereon Rath, who has come to Berlin from Cologne and has been assigned to the Vice division, thanks to his father pulling the right strings after he suffers a major disgrace in his home town.  While Rath is busy keeping down porn and making his way through the city's underground nightclubs, the Homicide Division is struggling with the case they've nicknamed "Aquarius." It's a case that is driving the division crazy; they have very little to go on aside from the fact that their victim was tortured before he died of a heroin overdose and the car he was in was sent purposefully into a canal.

 In the meantime, a tangle in his lodging-house room one night with a Russian man sets Rath on the trail of the prior tenant, who has dealings with underworld gangs and anti-Stalinist communists.  It's then that he hears the strange story of smuggled Russian gold, but more importantly, his own secret investigation, plus info he gets from Charlotte, a young Homicide department stenographer, gives him what he feels might be the upper hand in the Aquarius case -- a  "nasse fisch," (wet fish) --  now a case "put on ice."   Solving the case on his own is especially important to Rath for his own reasons -- he can't stand the "arrogant homicide detective" running Aquarius, and with his knowledge that he keeps to himself, he "looked forward to the day when he could show him up..."  But he's also carried a lot of baggage from Cologne to Berlin, which has some personal bearing on the importance of solving this case.

 Everything is looking great for this young and ambitious Inspector, right up until the time when things go horribly wrong, putting both his career and his life in serious jeopardy.

Inspector Gideon Rath, from the TV series -- Nordic Drama

Political struggles on the streets, seedy underground nightspots run by rival gangs, rival Communist factions, all pale in comparison to the real story here, which is the corruption that permeates all levels of this city.  For Gideon, who's still getting used to how things work in Berlin, trying to figure out who exactly he can trust also becomes a major issue. He's in an unusual spot of being both insider and outsider; he has no interest in politics, and in a very big way he comes across as being rather naive.

First novels in a series are generally the weakest, but this one is actually quite good.  I mean, the reality is that there is a book two and beyond so we know things are going to work out, but I swear, I was on pins and needles throughout,  wondering how Rath was going to fare.  But there's also the element of the here and now in this city that captured my attention; there are brief mentions of Hitler and of Nazis but this is a very "in this moment" sort of book that doesn't really give any clue as to where Germany will go in the next few years. 

One reader noted that this book reminded her of the novels of Marek Krajewski, but I'm not sure I agree with that assessment -- Krajewski's work gets down into the deepest decadence of this period in ways that this book and author never do.  I've also seen more than one comparison of Babylon Berlin to the work of Philip Kerr, but again, I don't think that's exactly accurate either. And to those readers who found this book "too long" and "tedious," well, there's also a graphic novel available.

If you can divorce yourself  while reading this book from the stunning Netflix series, it turns into a very good read.  Otherwise, you may be setting yourself up for disappointment since aside from people and a couple of plot elements that carry from page to screen, the two are very, very different.  Do not miss the series though; unexpected twists in every episode will keep you glued and wanting to binge.

On to book two.

Crime, by Ferdinand von Schirach

9780307594150

Alfred A. Knopf, 2011

originally published as Verbrechen, 2009

translated by Carol Brown Janeway

188 pp

hardcover

"The reality we can put into words is never reality itself." 
-- Werner K. Heisenberg, epigraph

I watched the most interesting tv show last week on MHZ called "Crime Stories" and realized when the name Von Schirach popped up that I had this book on my shelves.   Instead of doing my normal thing where I read the book first, I stayed up late and watched the entire show; the next day I grabbed the book and started reading.   In the series the first episode grabbed me and wouldn't let go; reading the book was the same.  

There are eleven short fictional vignettes here, all of which are linked by the concept of guilt. My understanding is that they're are all based on the cases of former clients of Von Schirach, who is a somewhat controversial German defense attorney and very well-known writer. This book, after its publication, remained  on Der Spiegel's bestseller list for 54 weeks, according to Wikipedia.   These are not your standard legal defense narratives by any stretch;  it is the circumstances leading up to the commission of each crime which informs the basis of each story.   It is also an exploration of not only what constitutes the idea of guilt,  but also what it is that lies at the core of each human in this book.  These people are not the sort of monsters one might expect in cases such as these; some of them make very bad judgment calls, some are driven by mental illness, while others, well, those I'll leave for readers to discover.   He also, I think, asks us to consider the nature of sentencing and justice -- given the human factors beneath what these people have done, is it right in every case to hand down a one-size-fits-all-by-law, prescribed sort of judgment?

The first story,  "Fähner," sets the tones of  both writing and discourse within this book.   The author employs a rather lean, unemotional sort of prose style to relate the tale of  a GP from Rotweil who, as the cover blurb notes, finally got a "reprieve" the day he took an axe to his wife's head.  But Fähner is no hardened criminal; as we're told at the outset his "life wasn't anything that gave rise to stories. Until the thing with Ingrid." The thing is, while we have the basic outline of Fähner's life with his wife, there are no detailed scenes between the two of them that allow us to see exactly what was happening; the author leaves it to the reader to read between the lines.   But there's a great scene in this story where, on the night before he turns 60, he looks at a photo of his wife taken during their honeymoon (one he'd salvaged and hidden after she'd thrown away  their wedding photos) , sits on the edge of the bathtub, and cries "for the first time in his adult life." It's the understanding that he comes to at this point that really allows the reader to see inside of his mind and to feel some empathy for this man; his story continues through trial, judgment and sentencing.  Throughout Fähner's experiences, and actually, throughout this entire set of stories, we are called upon to consider something Von Schirach's uncle once told him:  "Most things are complicated, and guilt always presents a bit of a problem."

As the author himself says,

"All our lives we dance on a thin layer of ice; it's very cold underneath, and death is quick. The ice won't bear the weight of some people and they fall through"

and it is that moment that interests him.  How many people in our lives  might be just a set of circumstances away from that moment is another thing we ought to consider; it's a point he makes very clearly in this book:

"If we're lucky, it never happens to us and we keep dancing. If we're lucky."

I was floored after finishing it, and there were moments in this book where I had to put it down and really think before I could go back to it.  Whether or not anyone will sympathize with the people in this book is an individual judgment call, but it is really tough not to feel something.  The book itself is  also an excellent use of crime fiction as a way to understand not only human nature, but also in offering insights into society itself.

Definitely recommended; not at all usual crime fare but something unique.

The Girl Who Wasn't There, by Ferdinand von Schirach

9781408705827
Little, Brown, 2014
216 pp

originally published as Tabu, 2013
translated by Anthea Bell

paperback

I have no idea when this book is going to be published in the US, but it's definitely one worth looking into. Although I'm posting about it in the same space as other crime fiction, I'm not exactly sure that particular moniker fits this novel.   Whatever you want to call it, it is an interesting work that in my opinion takes reader expectations and turns them on their heads in a very big way. What it centers on is truth and reality; however,  having read von Schirach before, I'm not surprised to see his ongoing themes of the nature of crime, the judicial process, and the nature of guilt repeated in this novel.

The way this book is set up is genius -- sadly, I can't really recount much of the story without giving too much away.  What I can say is that von Schirach carefully guides his readers through the story of Sebastian von Eschburg, who as a young boy lived with his parents in a lakeside home up until the time his father kills himself.  His mother had always been inattentive to him, preferring to bestow her love on her horses, but his father spent time with him, for example, taking him hunting. On one such trip, Sebastian watches his father bring down a deer -- and the experience is one that stays with him for a very long time, as will his father's suicide, which his mother tried to convince him was just a bad dream.  She also tries to convince him that his father was merely cleaning his gun and it went off accidentally, something Sebastian knows is not true. The house, of course, is sold, and Sebastian returns to the boarding school that he will call home for the bulk of his childhood.  When he is finished with school he comes back home -- his mother has married  a genuine creep and all three of them know that living with mom and her new husband is not in the cards for Sebastian. He takes up the photography profession, and it isn't long until he becomes known for his work. He eventually comes to have quite a name in the art world, money, and a lovely woman beside him, but there is something quite dark deep down inside of Sebastian that prevents him from happiness. He also knows that if the situation with the woman becomes serious, he will end up "hurting" her.  He is a very strange person, and it will come as no surprise to the reader at all, given his past, that he ends up becoming the only suspect in a murder.  (This is not a spoiler by the way; a lot of this outline is on the back cover).  While in jail, Sebastian requests that Konrad Biegler become his defense attorney, and Biegler, who is recuperating at a Swiss hotel for burnout, takes the opportunity to get back into the courtroom once again. But as he will discover, and not only from his client, there is truth, and then there is truth.

If that all sounds cryptic, it is meant to be -- to tell is to spoil so it's one that is best experienced on one's own. I will say that long before this story was over I had figured things out (hoping as usual that I was wrong) -- but not the who or the how, and I was still blown away.   Throughout the book  I was entirely wrapped up in von Eschburg's world of darkness and pain almost to the point of claustrophobia, and truthfully,  I enjoyed the getting there more than the reveal of the actual solution. von Schirach is a great storyteller, and while this book is very different than his The Collini Case, which I absolutely loved, there are a number of the same elements that are explored in The Girl Who Wasn't There. This is an incredibly intelligent novel that demands a reread -- and after the second time through, the book made much more sense.   What he does here is so different than the norm that it was actually refreshing from a reader point of view.  As noted earlier, it's not so much a crime fiction novel, but I can't exactly explain why without ruining things. It is, however, one of the better books I've read so far this year and is certainly a candidate for favorite books of 2015.  Definitely recommended.

Snow White Must Die, by Nele Neuhaus

9781250039774
Minotaur Books, 2013
originally published 2010 as Schneewittchen muss sterben
translated by Steven T. Murray
392 pp

paperback

Snow White Must Die is the fourth book in the von Bodenstein/Kirchoff series and the first one of these books to be translated into English.

The goodreads Mystery, Crime and Thriller group has a monthly group read and discussion, and I nominated this book for the April/May slot. It won; by default I became the moderator for the discussion. I'd wanted to read this book anyway, but this turn of events brought the book up to the top of the crime tbr pile.  After reading it, I think no one will ever vote on any book I suggest in the future -- despite all of the rave reviews this book is getting, for me it turned out to be not so hot. And that's putting it nicely.

Set in Germany, the novel begins with the return home of Tobias Sartorius, now 30, who has spent the last ten years in prison for the murder of two teenaged girls, Stefanie Schneeberger and Laura Wagner from the village of Altenhain. Their bodies had never been recovered, but circumstantial evidence and Tobias' inability to remember much about that night (since he'd been drinking) were enough to put him behind bars. Now he's out, and with nowhere else to go, returns to the village to his parents' home. Things at the family farm have deteriorated,  his mom and dad are now divorced and the small community is not happy about a killer being back in their midst. At the same time,  Oliver von Bodenstein, chief superintendent of the Division of Violent Crimes and  his colleague, detective Pia Kirchhoff, of the Division of Violent Crimes, are called in when some construction workers have the misfortune of digging up a skeleton at a former military airfield.  While they're waiting to hear about the forensics, they are put onto another case of a woman who had fallen  off a pedestrian bridge into oncoming traffic. The victim's name is Rita Cramer, and as it happens, this is her maiden name that she starting using after the divorce from her husband, who just happens to be Harmut Sartorius, father of Tobias. The cops are lucky on this one; they have a fuzzy surveillance photo that they show to people in Althein -- but no one seems to know the person. At least that's what they say -- Pia believes that they're all hiding something.  After the skeleton is identified as one of the missing girls supposedly murdered by Tobias, Pia thinks perhaps that case needs a fresh look.  There are any number of people with both motive and opportunity but this won't be an easy case to solve because everybody seems to have secrets.  Add to this mix a young teenaged waitress who decides that Tobias might have been framed and who does some sleuthing of her own.

If the author could have left it at the basic mysteries of this story and their subsequent unravelings, it probably would have been a good crime novel.  But no. First of all, this novel is all over the map -- each time I felt that these puzzles were about to be solved, the author felt like she had to add even more to tease the readers. Unlike the twists and turns that normally delight me as a crime reader, all of these additions just made me even more frustrated and wanting things to end.  I can't give an example without blowing things, but trust me here. Second, while I get that authors throw in the private of lives of their main characters to make them more realistic, here the inclusion of the off-work problems of the cops was way over the top. Pages are spent on Pia's zoning problems with her home; no effort is spared to relate the story of Oliver's faithless wife and his feelings about things, and then there's the saga of Pia's ex-husband and his woman troubles, all of which combined take up way too much of this novel. A mention here and there I could take, but this was like chick-lit in the middle of a crime story. Sadly, I'm starting to see this in a number of crime novels -- if the author is aiming for the widest possible audience, she's succeeding.  Personally I find it kind of a sad trend, but that's just me.  Obviously a lot of people really like it.

As I noted above, there are a lot of people who absolutely loved this book, so once again I find myself swimming against the tide of public opinion. Would I read another book by this author? Probably not. I think she has a good mind for crime, but frankly, if this book is an example of her writing style, it's just not for me.

The Collini Case, by Ferdinand von Schirach

9780718159191
Michael Joseph/Penguin, 2012
originally published as Der Fall Collini, 2011
translated by Anthea Bell
191 pp
(hardcover)

"You are who you are."

The Collini Case is, much like Pia Juul's The Murder of Halland, a novel based on the commission of a crime yet really isn't crime fiction per se. There is a murder, but the focus of this novel is more on what lies beneath the decision of a retired Mercedes-Benz toolmaker to walk into a man's hotel room, shoot him, and then brutally kick him -- breaking all of the bones in his head while grinding his shoe into the man's face.  Unlike many crime novels, this book is not meant to be entertaining; on the contrary, it is a story designed with a specific purpose in mind. If you're looking for the typical whodunit kind of read, pass on this one; it's not a staggering legal thriller, nor is it meant to be. However, since The Collini Case was listed on Eurocrime's list of novels possibly eligible for the International Dagger award for 2013, I'll post about it here.  

In an interview at BBC Radio 4, Von Schirach notes that when he writes about crime, the whodunit is not important to him, but rather it is the motive behind criminal acts that he finds interesting.  This is certainly the case in his novel, where Fabrizio Collini, a long-time worker at Mercedes Benz,  makes an appointment with a wealthy industrialist at his hotel in Berlin. Posing as a journalist, Collini is welcomed into the man's room, where he promptly proceeds to put four bullets into the man's head, and repeatedly grind his shoe into the dead man's face. When the act is finished, he goes downstairs, asks the woman at the front desk to inform the police that the man in room 400 is dead, then quietly waits to be arrested.  It isn't long before he is taken into custody, but when his lawyer, Caspar Leinen, arrives, Collini provides only minimal answers. Yet he will not answer the crucial question as to why he killed the man.  Leinen, a new defense attorney, knows he's going to have his work cut out for him; but little does he understand the ramifications of taking on Collini's defense.  

The Collini Case is difficult to summarize without ruining it for prospective readers, but even in its spare, understated tone, this slow-paced story is powerful and gets to the thematic issue of guilt as determined by a person's circumstances. Also present throughout the story is the idea of justice in the present world where the past still has a strong foothold within a system that may have very well failed at its own mission.  While these themes are writ large, there's also a side trip into the reflections of one's own life in the light of revelations of  family secrets.  You may think as you read that you know what's coming down the pike, but trust me, that's not really the case.

Ferdinand von Schirach is himself a criminal attorney with a past not unlike that of some of the characters in The Collini Case.  While some readers found it "predictable," "pedestrian," and found that the core issue may have been better served in a pamphlet or magazine article, I have to disagree.  It is an all-too human story about the consequences that evolve out of fundamental wrongs within the system that somehow everyone overlooked, with devastating results all around.  I think people started into the book with expectations of a legal thriller and the fact that it came out to be something entirely different may have proved disappointing,  but that's certainly not the fault of the author.

While true blue mystery/crime fiction fans may not find what they're looking for in this book, to me it was an eye-opening story with a punch.  Perhaps a crime-fiction audience isn't the best market for this novel, but it's quite an engaging read that I finished in one sitting.  Now I'm going to pull out my copies of his other books Crime and Guilt which have been collecting dust on my shelves; I can't wait to read what else this man has written.  Definitely recommended. 

--number 6 of my books labeled as eligible for the 2013 international dagger awards. 

 fiction from Germany

The Murder Farm, by Andrea Maria Schenkel

9781847247650
Quercus
181 pp.
Translated from German by Anthea Bell

The Murder Farm begins with a few introductory words from an unnamed narrator:

I spent the first summer after the end of the war with distant relations in the country.

During those weeks, that village seemed to me an island of peace.  One of the last places to have survived intact after the great storm that we had just weathered.

 Years later, when life had gone back to normal and that summer was only a happy memory, I read about the same village in the paper.

 My village had become the home of 'the murder farm' and I couldn't get the story out of my mind.

And the narrator is correct: you won't get the story out of your mind any time soon. The Murder Farm  is one of those novels that once you begin reading you shouldn't plan to do anything else until it's over.

The book is set in the 1950s, after the end of World War II in Germany and the American occupation.  The central focus of the novel is the Danner family, who live on their isolated farm in the woods.When they are not seen for a few days, a few of the villagers go to the farm to check things out and find the entire family dead -- someone has taken a pickaxe and killed the entire family -- Mr. and Mrs. Danner, their daughter Barbara, her two small children, and a young maid who has just begun to work at the farm. Throughout this dark and gloomy book, the unnamed narrator mentioned above gathers the stories of the people who live and work in the village, and through their narratives  it becomes quite apparent that the family was not popular and not very well-liked. But there are some things that not even the narrator is privy to -- interspersed with the testimonies of the villagers are other third-party narratives which leave you to wonder a) how much you're reading is simply gossip and how much is the truth, and b) who might have wanted this entire family dead.

It is truly difficult to believe that this is Schenckel's first book.  The bleak tone of the novel is set at the beginning and although the prose is sparse, it only accentuates the air of gloom that follows through the entire novel. The Murder Farm offers a psychological portrait of a family living in isolation as well as a brief glimpse at how the war affected the people in the village. But what it offers most is a crime which is at once both  realistic and believable, making it all the more creepy the further you go into the story.

Very atmospheric and bleak, The Murder Farm is a very good read, one I would recommend without hesitation to any reader of crime fiction.  It will keep you turning pages until the very end.

Fiction from Germany