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THE CONSTANT MAN by Peter Steiner

THE CONSTANT MAN

by Peter Steiner

Pub Date: June 1st, 2021
ISBN: 978-0-7278-9074-0
Publisher: Severn House

A former police detective hunts a serial rapist in Nazi Germany.

Now that he’s identified high-ranking Nazi official Otto Bruck as a serial murderer and rapist in The Good Cop (2019), Munich detective Willi Geismeier has been forced to leave his police job and his home. Still feeling responsible for finding the man who attacked Lola Zeff, he returns secretly to Munich, living under the alias Karl Juncker, to find him. As he does his best to lie low, rising Nazi aggression and internal turmoil repeatedly put Willi’s quest on the back burner. Steiner’s brief chapters create a tapestry of Germany under the rising influence of the Gestapo. Ambitious storm trooper Lt. Walter Kempf arrests fellow Nazi Ernst Röhm for being homosexual as part of a project called Operation Hummingbird. DS Hermann Gruber worries that his wife, Mitzi, is in danger because of her Jewish heritage. Storm trooper Heinz Schleiffer is surprised to find his adult son, Tomas, at a show of “degenerate art” put on by Joseph Goebbels and disturbed to learn that Tomas opposes the Nazis. The intellectual Reinhard Pabst is lukewarm about the Nazi cause but attracted by the power his allegiance to the Führer provides. Willi does have his allies: Lola is anxious for closure, and his landlady, Frau Schimmel, informs him of visitors who come looking for him. His investigation gains traction with the discovery of more victims. All too often, though, Steiner’s cursory attempts to provide a more complex depiction of Germany in this era distract attention from Willi’s pursuit of a serial killer.

A brisk if uneven thriller peppered with historical detail about Nazi Germany.