Joseph Kanon's third novel is a grimly humorous little tale of postwar intrigue.
It focuses on Jake Geismar, a wartime correspondent sent back to Berlin to do
a series of articles for Collier's. He also has a hidden agenda: find his wartime
love, a native Berliner who's gone missing. Complications abound from the get-go,
including a professional relationship dangerously close to turning personal, a
blowhard Senator, and the head of the nascent war crimes division, all of whom
are staying in the same house as Geismar. And they get even more complex from
there.
Kanon is deft enough at weaving his subplots together, keeping things believable, and providing enough suspense to keep the reader turning page after page. However, be careful of the novel's sporadic lack of pace, especially at the beginning. If you make it through the beginning, sailing should be clear for the majority of the remaining time spent following Jake and friends around postwar Berlin.
Postwar Berlin is not a nice place to be, but we don't expect it to be. Kanon is excellent at adding those details that allow us to develop a feeling of creeping tension even if Geismar is doing nothing but walking down a street in midafternoon. When he's firing on all cylinders (and he is most of the time), Kanon keeps us riveted; it's possible to lose hours at a time in here, even whole afternoons. The plot twists and turns, and Kanon throws us enough curve balls so that, even if we can predict the ultimate resolution of the novel, the stuff between point A and point B is still well worth reading.
Please support RLK! by searching and ordering
your online books through the links below. Thanks!
