Blackout

PUBLISHERS WEEKLY STARRED REVIEW!

During Berlin’s brutally cold winter of 1939, a serial killer stalks the city throughout the Third Reich’s forced nightly blackouts in this chilling WWII crime novel from #1 Sunday Times bestselling author Simon Scarrow – perfect for fans of Babylon Berlin, Philip Kerr’s Berlin Trilogy, Robert Ludlum, Andrew Gross, and William Christie…

Berlin, 19 December 1939. War in Europe is distantly rumbling. Alluring former film actress Gerda Korzeny, arrives at a glamorous party with her lover, Oberst Karl Dorner. It’s commonly known she’s unhappily married to senior Nazi party lawyer, Gustav Korzeny, who has close connections to Joseph Goebbels, Minister of Propaganda for the Nazi party. She may be married, but she has a reputation, and Oberst is a jealous lover. After an argument, Gerda leaves early and is followed out by Dorner into the cold, snowy night. Their fight escalates, and Gerda eventually disappears alone into the darkness. As she heads towards the train station at Papestrasse she’s startled by a man who begins following her, but she loses him. She barely makes the train heading towards Anhalter, when a man enters her compartment. “You…” she stammers….

As winter approaches, Berlin has been plunged into a deep freeze. Temperatures have plummeted, and coal is scarce. But there’s another, more dangerous freeze – panic and paranoia have spread like a virus as blackouts are rigidly enforced. The Germans have crushed Poland, and the Nazis grip the public into compliance with a combination of propaganda, constant surveillance, and fear darker than any blackout. Every night the city becomes a cloaked and dangerous place where violence could strike from any hidden corner.

It’s up to Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke of Berlin’s Kriminalpolizei to solve who has murdered the film star. Curiously, the Nazi brass want to be intimately involved in the case. Schenke’s experience is valuable to the force, but his views of The Fuhrer and The Third Reich are continually at odds with the growing power of the Nazis. Having refused to apply for the SS, Schenke is isolated in his moral clarity, his political beliefs, and his authority.

Schenke’s enemy isn’t simply the killer roaming under cover of night, but the investigation itself, which takes him deeper into the regime’s darkest corridors, and into a deadly struggle between duty and the Nazis’ growing decree for total obedience. He’s precariously on the right side of the law – for now. Then another body turns up….