Berlin Trilogy

Berlin, 1927. When a studio executive at Ufa, the home of German Cinema, is found dead in his office bathtub, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar Nikolai Hoffner is determined to uncover the truth behind what he firmly believes is murder. With the help of Fritz Lang and Alby Pimm, the leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin, Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin's sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler's Brownshirts, and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Jonathan Rabb's Shadow and Light is an electrifying thriller set in a darkly beautiful Berlin poised on the edge of destruction.

An Intriguing Historical Thriller Set in the Barcelona of the Spanish Civil War On the eve of Hitler's Olympics, Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner, a half Jew, has been forced out of the Kriminalpolizei. Luckily, Hoffner's focus is elsewhere. His son Georg is missing in Spain, swept up in the sudden outbreak of the civil war. He has already lost Sascha, his elder son, who is fully entrenched in the Nazi regime. But, Georg is not what he appears to be, and when Hoffner discovers this, he is determined to save the one son he can. The Second Son is the eagerly awaited final installment in Jonathan Rabb's Berlin trilogy, set between the two world wars. In Harper's Magazine, John Leonard called the first, Rosa, "a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux." The second, Shadow and Light (2009), garnered rave reviews-in The Washington Post, Wendy Smith praised its "atmosphere" and "brilliantly plotted narrative." Now, nearly ten years after the events of Shadow and Light, Hoffner finds himself tossed into the chaos that is Spain- where he quickly meets anarchists, Soviet and British secret agents, and a female doctor called Mila Pera-as he follows a trail of clues left by Georg. Jonathan Rabb delivers another atmospheric work, rich with his storytelling talent and historical expertise.