Jon Morgan is a retired police Superintendent and francophile who, it is said, has consequently seen almost everything awful that people can do to each other. He relishes quality writing in all genres but advises particularly on police procedure for authors including John Harvey and Jon McGregor. Haunts bookshops both new and secondhand and stands with Erasmus: “When I have a little money, I buy books; and if I have any left, I may buy food and clothes.”
Blackout is not a new departure for Simon Scarrow and his familiar historical fiction set in ancient Rome. He has written several historical novels that are a departure from the Eagles of the Empire series. It is, however, the nearest I have come to finding a stand-in for the Bernie Gunther novels written by the late, and much-missed, Phillip Kerr. This is quite some feat as there are some serious contenders here – Volker Kutscher for one.
It is late 1939, Poland has fallen and the ‘phoney war’ is on. Rationing and fuel shortages combine to make this first winter of the war, a tough one. There is also the blackout, although no bombs have yet fallen on Berlin where the novel is set.
As with London in the blackout, crime has soared – so much for the ‘we are all in this together’ myth. All crime, is up: forgery, black marketeering, sexual assaults and murder. In this case the murder of a former actress, once the lover of Goebbels, now the wife of a senior Nazi lawyer.
There are high stakes for Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke of the Kripo, who because of his integrity and not having either joined the Nazi party and taken on SS rank, is handed the case and is under immense pressure to solve it, swiftly. Not least because it transpires that the actress Gerda Schnee, was in fact part Jewish; a fact concealed by Goebbels.
Schenke who is in a relationship with the niece of Admiral Wilhelm Canaris – head of the Abwehr, has to cope with his own doubts about the regime, manage his staff, many of whom are party members, fend off a plant from the Gestapo in his office and deal with Abwehr, SS and Gestapo interference, Oh, and solve the crimes.
When the bodies start to mount, and links are made to other murders of young women in and around the Berlin railway system, the case takes on even more complications. The eventual denouement, involving a survivor of one of the attacks who fought back, (and who is a ‘submarine,’ a Jewish woman living under a false identity.) is very dramatic and largely unexpected.
The book is a very satisfying read with what is obviously significant research onto wartime Nazi Germany, its politics, structure and tensions. One irritation, ‘justified’ in an afterword is the decision to use the English ‘Hail’ instead of the German ‘Heil’ when the Nazi party salute is used. Given the use of the German for the ranks and positions / organisations it jarred on this reader.
Blackout appears to be the start of a series with Schenke being drawn into the nascent anti-Nazi resistance. It will be a welcome one, if the quality of the writing is maintained and of course that ‘Hail’ is dropped.
