Review of Auslander by Paul Dowswell (2009, Bloomsbury)

Peter Brock’s family belong to the German community living in Poland pre-war. Having retained their farm after Germany invades Poland, his parents are killed in an accident on the eve of the invasion of the Soviet Union. Peter is sent to an orphanage in Warsaw where he is assessed as to his Aryan pedigree. With his strong Nordic features he is selected to be adopted by a leading Berlin-based racial scientist, Professor Kaltenbach. At first, Peter is happy to be in the city and to have a new family, but as he witnesses what is going on at school, in the Hitler Youth, and on the streets, he starts to rebel, forming an alliance with Anna Reiter, whose family have been helping Jews stay hidden and alive. Such an endeavour in Berlin in 1942 is highly risky, not just for them, but their families.

Auslander follows the fortunes of a teenage boy of German heritage but born and raised in Poland during the war. After his parents are killed, Peter Brock is first sent to an orphanage, then adopted by a well-connected family in Berlin. Out of place despite his Aryan ancestry, Peter instinctively reacts against Nazi ideology, seeking to help those that are persecuted despite the risks involved. In charting Peter’s story, Dowswell tells a wider story about racial science and the atrocities perpetrated by the Nazis and also the resistance of ordinary Germans to the Nazi regime. At times it felt that the story was primarily a vehicle for communicating this information, rather than it being a context for the story itself – and there is an imbalance of show and tell. Moreover, the book very much has the feel of a young adult book in terms of its telling. For my taste’s the story is far too linear and black and white. In particular, the last part of the story felt underdeveloped, with points of tension that lacked depth and intrigue. Overall, an interesting enough read, but a little too linear, straightforward, and too much show.

Review of The One Man by Andrew Gross (Minatour 2016)

Nathan Blum has managed to escape from the Krakow ghetto and make his way to America via neutral Sweden. There he enrols in the armed services, being assigned to an intelligence office in Washington DC given his language skills, though he longs for active service. The President is about to give him his wish, though it seems like a suicide mission. He’s asked if would parachute back into Poland, break into Auschwitz, find a physics professor, Alfred Mendl, whose knowledge of gaseous diffusion is vital for the Manhattan Project, then break-back out again and get the professor to safety. The odds are massively stacked against him: hundreds of thousands pass through the camp, but only two have ever escaped. Knowing that his family are dead and that the Allies have deemed the mission critical, Blum agrees to go. He’s fluent in Polish and German and he’s the skills and wits to survive and escape a Nazi ghetto, but getting in and out of a death camp will test him to the limits.

The One Man is a historical thriller set in 1944. The premise is quite straightforward: send a man into Auschwitz to locate another and get him out and to safety. Of course, doing that is far from straightforward. That is Nathan Blum’s challenge. And he has three days to do it; the Polish resistance due to ambush a work detail laying railway tracks outside the camp and then a plane from England will land in a nearby field to pick them up. The target is a physics professor, Alfred Mendl, who is vital to the Manhattan Project but didn’t get out of Europe in time. Blum manages to enter the camp, but then everything starts to unravel as he struggles to find Mendl, survive the guards, navigate camp life, and stay ahead of a German intelligence officer who’s hunting for him. Gross does a very nice job of using Auschwitz as a setting for a page-turning thriller without denigrating what happened there. In fact, he gives a good insight into the workings of the camp and life inside, populating it with believable characters and situations, and is respectful to the victims of the Holocaust. Yet, he doesn’t forget he’s telling a thriller. The three day time limit and the chase by the Abwehr officer repeatedly ratchets up the tension, plus there are some nice twists that create a strong affective response. Indeed, the plot is for the most part very well put together, the only weak spots for me being how the Abwehr officer picked up Blum’s trail and the intro/outro which felt a little stilted. This is more than made up for by the rest of the story, particularly the denouement and the final twist, which were excellent. The result was a thriller with first-rate historicisation, sense of place, characterisation, and a compelling plot.

Review of The End of the World in Breslau by Marek Krajewski (2003, Polish; 2010, Maclehose)

New York, 1960. Eberhard Mock is on his deathbed and wants to confess to his actions during his separation from his first wife in Breslau, 1927. At the time his marriage is imploding in domestic violence, rape and sexual promiscuity, Mock is trying to track down the ‘calender killer’, who is committing horrendous, brutal murders, leaving a page ripped from a diary with the victim. While Mock stews in alcohol and uses his officers to track his wife rather than the killer, his wife is taking revenge on his neglect by exploring her sexuality with her best friend and a baron. Despite his brutish flaws, Mock has a reputation for genius in investigating crimes and he’s soon approaching the murders from an unusual angle that points to mysterious sect.

The End of the World in Breslau is the second book in the Eberhard Mock series set in 1920s Breslau (present day Wroclaw). In this outing, Mock’s first marriage is ending at the same time as he’s trying to track down a serial killer obsessed with the past. At one level the tale is interesting enough as Mock tries to solve the crimes by focusing on the place it was committed rather than the crime or perpetrator. However, the story suffers from a couple of issues. The first is the thorough unpleasantness of Mock. Usually the bad cop is softened by a lighter side or the quest for redemption. Mock is embittered, vindictive and brutal: he beats and rapes his wife, he destroys careers, blackmails his boss, uses public resources as if his own, and tortures suspects. It may well be realistic, in the sense that some cops might be cut from that cloth, but it’s a brave move to have such a lead character as it’s difficult for the reader to find a point of connection. It’s not helped by every other main character in the book being almost as flawed or selfish, and every aspect of the storyline being rooted in immorality, violence and corruption. I appreciate that was probably the intention, but having no points of light in the darkness was wearing after a while. In addition, part of the problem of the storytelling is that is supposedly set out as a confession by Mock. Yet it’s told in the third person and has sections that relate specifically to his wife or colleagues that he could not know the intimate details of; he also claims to have no knowledge as to what happened to her after 1928, yet she became famous, making that unlikely. Moreover, the end became very messy and difficult to follow. All round, not a very satisfying read, though there was enough intrigue to keep my turning pages to find out the resolution of the murders.

Review of Entanglement by Zygmunt Miloszewski (Bitter Lemon Press, 2010; Polish 2007)

Four patients and their psychotherapist gather in a former church in Warsaw for a weekend of family constellation therapy.  The morning after the first night, Henry Talek is found dead having had a skewer jammed through his eye into his brain.  State prosecutor Teo Szachi is given the task of investigating the case, quickly surmising that one of the attendees is the murderer rather than it being committed by a disturbed burglar or suicide.  The problem is that there is no obvious suspect or motive.  Laboriously he sets about his investigation trying to get a sense of the victim, his family, and the other attendees of the therapy.  In the meantime, he struggles with his sense that he’s trapped in a low-paying, high-stress, thankless job and rapidly souring marriage, dallying with starting an affair.  As he slowly makes progress, it starts to become clear that there is more at stake than solving the death of Talek and there is more threatening his family than a fling with a journalist.

This book has been on my to-be-read pile for quite some time and I've made a start on it three or four times, but never made it past the first twenty pages or so.  The story and the lead character just never got me hooked enough to continue.  This time round I pushed through and by a third of the way in I was intrigued enough to finish the book.  That said, I never warmed to the lead character, Teo Szachi, a misogynist state prosecutor who seems to be having his mid-life crisis at thirty five.  I also didn’t buy how he stumbled on the background story, nor the intricate way the case was tied together, the use of family constellation therapy, or the denouement.  It all seemed so improbable. The background story was however interesting as was the procedural elements relating to workings of state prosecutor’s office, the story did gain pace and tension, and Szachi’s boss and police colleague enlivened things.  Overall, an improbable police procedural that has some nice touches.