A solid thriller set amid riveting historical events in the seedy underbelly of a city—and a world—slowly going mad.
In Grossman’s debut novel, a Jewish cop in 1932 Berlin hunts the perpetrators of a grotesque crime, against a backdrop of political turmoil.
Willi Kraus, the cop famous for catching the infamous Kinderfresser child murderer some years back, is called to a riverside crime scene on the outskirts of Berlin. The body of a young woman has washed up, and she’s been mutilated—someone has expertly grafted the bones in her calves on backwards. But before the investigation into this bizarre crime can begin, Willi receives another assignment, this time from President Hindenburg. A Bulgarian princess has gone missing while visiting Berlin, "sleepwalking" (in the words of the doorman at her hotel) into the night, and Willi is to drop everything and find her. Willi decides it’s too much of a coincidence that the somnambulant princess went to see the Great Gustave’s hypnotism act at a nightclub the evening she disappeared. When Gustave’s name comes up in the case of the dead girl, and after Willi and his loyal assistant find evidence of dozens of girls sleepwalking away into the ether in recently years, Willi is convinced that Gustave is hypnotizing girls with great legs, and sending them off into the hands of some evil master orthopedic surgeon. Meanwhile, Willi has become entangled with a prostitute named Putzi, the dead girl’s roommate. In order to help avenge her friend’s death, Putzi comes up with a scheme that involves her being hypnotized by Gustave, while Willi and his gadfly journalist friend Fritz follow along. It seems foolproof. But in Berlin in 1932, nothing is certain. Stripped of its setting, this book is a fairly straightforward thriller, but surrounded by the dramatic events of the Nazi rise to power, it takes on added heft and a relentless drive.
A solid thriller set amid riveting historical events in the seedy underbelly of a city—and a world—slowly going mad.Pub Date: Oct. 1, 2010
ISBN: 978-0-312-60190-4
Page Count: 320
Publisher: St. Martin's
Review Posted Online: Aug. 17, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Sept. 1, 2010
BOOK REVIEW
BOOK REVIEW
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.
Coulter’s treasured FBI agents take on two cases marked by danger and personal involvement.
Dillon Savitch and his wife, Lacey Sherlock, have special abilities that have served them well in law enforcement (Paradox, 2018, etc.). But that doesn't prevent Sherlock’s car from hitting a running man after having been struck by a speeding SUV that runs a red light. The runner, though clearly injured, continues on his way and disappears. Not so the SUV driver, a security engineer for the Bexholt Group, which has ties to government agencies. Sherlock’s own concussion causes memory loss so severe that she doesn’t recognize Savitch or remember their son, Sean. The whole incident seems more suspicious when a blood test from the splatter of the man Sherlock hit reveals that he’s Justice Cummings, an analyst for the CIA. The agency’s refusal to cooperate makes Savitch certain that Bexholt is involved in a deep-laid plot. Meanwhile, Special Agent Griffin Hammersmith is visiting friends who run a cafe in the touristy Virginia town of Gaffers Ridge. Hammersmith, who has psychic abilities, is taken aback when he hears in his mind a woman’s cry for help. Reporter Carson DeSilva, who came to the area to interview a Nobel Prize winner, also has psychic abilities, and she overhears the thoughts of Rafer Bodine, a young man who has apparently kidnapped and possibly murdered three teenage girls. Unluckily, she blurts out her thoughts, and she’s snatched and tied up in a cellar by Bodine. Bodine may be a killer, but he’s also the nephew of the sheriff and the son of the local bigwig. So the sheriff arrests Hammersmith and refuses to accept his FBI credentials. Bodine's mother has psychic powers strong enough to kill, but she meets her match in Hammersmith, DeSilva, Savitch, and Sherlock.
Greed, love, and extrasensory abilities combine in two middling mysteries.Pub Date: July 30, 2019
ISBN: 978-1-5011-9365-1
Page Count: 512
Publisher: Simon & Schuster
Review Posted Online: June 30, 2019
Kirkus Reviews Issue: July 15, 2019
Colorful, but best for those who don't mind Picoult's heavily sentimental style.
Teenaged witches, DNA evidence, Megan's Law, belladonna-laced tea, and an honest ex-con addicted to Jeopardy!, all mixed up in a well-researched if slightly disappointing small-town legal drama by veteran Picoult (Plain Truth, 2000, etc.).
Honest prep-school teacher and soccer coach Jack St. Bride has just completed an unjust sentence for statutory rape, to which he pleaded guilty only because a lazy lawyer persuaded him to hedge his bets. Somewhat unbelievably, he managed to escape being raped in prison by telling the brutal Mountain Felcher, "You're not going to break me." When he stops in Salem Falls, New Hampshire, to begin anew, things start looking up as he falls swiftly in love with his employer, fragile diner-owner Addie Peabody. The fact that she "tasted of coffee and loneliness" upon first kiss does not hinder Jack, but the law does: as a convicted sexual offender, he's required to register with the local police, and of course they can't keep a secret. Before long, there's widespread paranoia about the "dangerous rapist" on the loose in Salem Falls. Foremost of the alarmists is Amos Duncan, head of Duncan Pharmaceuticals, the town's only major corporation. His ire is exacerbated when his weird daughter Gillian, a devoted Wiccan, sets into action a chain of events that snares Jack in another rape charge—this time not merely statutory. One-third of the way in, the story turns into a courtroom battle between civil-liberties eccentric Jordan McAfee and sanctimonious prosecutor Matt Houlihan. Picoult's depiction of the legal process is excellent, especially her intriguing and thorough explanation of DNA evidence, and the narrative is impressively complicated, with a couple of eye-opening surprises. A few of the resolutions, however, seem contrived, and when the language turns lyrical or metaphorical, it falls flat.
Colorful, but best for those who don't mind Picoult's heavily sentimental style.Pub Date: April 10, 2001
ISBN: 0-7434-1870-0
Page Count: 416
Publisher: Pocket
Review Posted Online: May 19, 2010
Kirkus Reviews Issue: Feb. 1, 2001
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