Gereon Rath (5)

THE BASIS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL TV SENSATION BABYLON BERLIN Volker Kutscher, author of the international bestseller Babylon Berlin, continues his Gereon Rath Mystery series with The Silent Death as a police inspector investigates the crime and corruption of a decadent 1930s Berlin in the shadows the growing Nazi movement. March 1930: The film business is in a process of change. Talking films are taking over the silver screen and many a producer, cinema owner, and silent movie star is falling by the wayside. Celebrated actress Betty Winter is hit by a spotlight while filming a talkie. At first it looks like an accident, but Superintendent Gereon Rath finds clues that point to murder. While his colleagues suspect the absconded lighting technician, Rath’s investigations take him in a completely different direction, and he is soon left on his own. Steering clear of his superior who wants him off the case, Rath’s life gets more complicated when his father asks him to help Cologne mayor Konrad Adenauerwith a case of blackmail, and ex-girlfriend Charly tries to renew their relationship—all while tensions between Nazis and Communists escalate to violence.

THE BASIS FOR THE INTERNATIONAL TV SENSATION BABYLON BERLIN

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―NPR

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―Publishers Weekly (starred review)

July 1932. When a drowned man is found in a freight elevator in Haus Vaterland, the giant pleasure palace on Potsdamer Platz, Inspector Gereon Rath is called in to investigate. It’s not that Rath hasn’t problems enough. His hunt for a mysterious contract killer has been stalled for weeks, and his on-off lover, Charlotte Ritter, has just begun her probationary year with Berlin CID. The corpse in Haus Vaterland looks to be part of a series of murders whose trail leads eastwards to the Polish border – and beyond.

Berlin,1931. A power struggle is taking place in Berlin’s underworld. The American gangster Abraham Goldstein is in residence at the Hotel Excelsior. As a favour to the FBI, the police put him under surveillance with Detective Gereon Rath on the job. As Rath grows bored and takes on a private case for his seedy pal Johann Marlow, he soon finds himself in the middle of a Berlin street war. Meanwhile Rath’s on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman she is interrogating escape, and soon her investigations cross Rath’s from the other side. Berlin is a divided city where two worlds are about to collide: the world of the American gangster and the expanding world of Nazism.

It is 1933 and a dead man has been found lying under railway arches in Berlin. An old soldier, hideously disfigured, he has been killed mysteriously. Gereon Rath is brought onto the case while his fiancée, Charlotte Ritter, blazes her own trail. Meanwhile, the Nazis consolidate their hold on power, the Reichstag is burned down, and things become a lot worse not only for Berlin's Jewish community but also for those police officers who can remain in action.