Philip Kerr4.7 Berlin 1934. The Nazis have been in power for just eighteen months but already Germany has seen some unpleasant changes. As the city prepares to host the 1936 Olympics, Jews are being expelled from all German sporting organisations - a blatant example of discrimination. Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin's Criminal Police, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. The discovery of two bodies - one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer - involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful left-wing journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself and the Chicago mob. As events unfold, Bernie uncovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are prepared to spend to showcase the new Germany to the world. It is a plot that finds its conclusion twenty years later in pre-revolution Cuba, the country to which Bernie flees from Argentina at the end of A Quiet Flame.
Ренни Айрт0.0 "[Rennie Airth's] meticulously detailed procedural mysteries are beautifully written . . . well worth reading, and rereading."
-Marilyn Stasio, The New York Times Book Review
On a freezing London night in 1944, Rosa Novak is brutally murdered during a blackout. Scotland Yard suspects the young Polish refugee was the victim of a random act of violence and might have dropped the case if former police investigator John Madden hadn't been her employer. Madden feels he owes it to Rosa to find her killer and pushes the investigation, uncovering her connection to a murdered Parisian furrier, a member of the Resistance, and a stolen cache of diamonds.
Delivering the atmospheric writing and compelling characters that have already established Rennie Airth as a master of suspense as well as style, this long-awaited third installment in the John Madden series is historical crime writing at its best.
Марк Миллз2.6 Весна 1942 года. Британский офицер Максимилиан Чедвик откомандирован на Мальту, военно-морскую базу Великобритании, которую безжалостно бомбят фашисты. Его цель - положительно повлиять на моральный климат среди испытывающего колоссальные тяготы местного населения острова, а значит, тщательно дозировать информацию, чтобы не будоражить общественное мнение. И когда Чедвик узнает о жестоком убийстве нескольких мальтийских женщин, в которых замешан военнослужащий англичанин с маниакальными наклонностями, он, не предавая подробности огласке, чтобы избежать скандала, берется лично изобличить преступника. Увлекшись расследованием, Чедвик слишком поздно понимает, что его используют в изуверской смертоносной игре.
Andrew Williams0.0 Spring, 1941. The armies of the Reich are masters ofEurope.Britain stands alone, dependent on her battered navy for survival, while Hitlers submarines -- his grey wolves - prey on the Atlantic convoys that are the countrys only lifeline. Lieutenant Douglas Lindsay is amongst just a handful of men picked up when his ship is torpedoed.
Unable to free himself from the memories of that night at sea, he becomes an interrogator with naval intelligence, questioning captured U-Boat crews. He is convinced the Germans have broken British naval codes, but hes a lone voice, a damaged outsider, and his superiors begin to wonder - can he really be trusted when so much is at stake? As the Blitz reduces Britains cities to rubble and losses at sea mount, Lindsay becomes increasingly isolated and desperate. No one will believe him, not even his lover, Mary Henderson, who works at the very heart of the intelligence establishment.
Lindsay decides to risk all in one last throw of the dice, setting a trap for his prize captive - and nemisis - U-Boat Commander Jurgen Mohr, the man who sent his ship to its doom...
Лаура Уилсон0.0 Summer, 1944: After almost five years of conflict, London's exhausted inhabitants, battered by the new menace of Hitler's V1 bombs, are living hand-to-mouth in a world of dust and dereliction, and war-weary.
DI Ted Stratton is no exception. Still haunted by the memory of Diana Calthrop, the beautiful M15 agent who worked with him on a case in 1940 and whose fate he never discovered, Stratton is called upon to investigate the case of a dead doctor, found in suspicious circumstances on a bomb-site near Fitzrovia's Middlesex Hospital. Was it an affair that turned fatally sour, revenge for a fatal case of misdiagnosis, or, despite appearances, simply an unfortunate accident? Or, as Stratton begins to suspect, is there someone at the hospital who is not what he appears to be and will go to any lengths to protect his fake persona?
Ted's wife, Jenny, working at the local Rest Centre, battles on valiantly although her spirit of make-do is wearing as thin as her clothing and she desperately misses her children, who are still evacuees in Suffolk.When a bombed-out and destitute woman appears at the centre, declaring that the man who claims to be her husband is, although identical, an imposter, Jenny thinks that it must be due to the effects of shock. The reality, however, is much stranger and far more dangerous...
