Rating: 
Summary: A Good Read
Review: This novel is an excellent portrayal of the aftereffects of war as it takes place in Germany immediately following the end of WWII. The personal stories against that chaotic backdrop are sometimes poignant, sometimes disturbing, but it is the devastated landscape and surviving humanity that capture the imagination. So many of the elements that seem to be playing out in Iraq today are the same elements that figure in this book set in post-war Germany. It is a mystery with a romance interwoven (or vice-versa, perhaps) but it is mostly the story of survivors picking up pieces of lives in a totally new, and frightening, world.
Rating: 
Summary: It trips on the threshold of greatness...
Review: "The Good German' by Joseph Kanon comes so close to greatness, one almost hates to quibble, but quibble i must. I see on the back cover the reviewer from 'The New York Times" compares the author to LeCarre, Greene and Orwell: no, no and no. And I hasten to add, I do not blame Kanon so much as his editor.
I'm beginning to really dislike when writers rely too heavily on coincidence and this one does to an extaordinary degree. The hero, Jake Geismar, begins the story on a plane with a man he later finds shot dead in a lake. Why put them on the same plane? Why have Jake find him? This same dead man has helped the escape of the hero's lover's husband from an American detention 'spa'. The hero, by the way, relocates his old flame not by spotting her, but by following a blue dress he had seen several years before on his lover, but now worn by another. Whew, what are the chances? But luck is on Jake's side and the coincidences mount up.
This all takes place in the ruins of Berlin very shortly after its downfall during WWII. And Kanon successfully brings us back there, which is no small feat. He also shows us the utter despair of the Germans who are just managing to survive. One of the book's main themes is trying to expose the guilty. As Kanon explains, if everyone is a criminal, perhaps noone is. And just about everyone is guilty of something here: the Germans, the Russians, the Americans. Maybe just the children are free of the stain, but the sins of the parents are, of course, visited upon their children.
There are a few clumsy passages, as when Jake's lover nonchalantly says she had killed the Russian who raped her. Where did that come from? And some moments where the melodrama almost drowns the plot. Also, at one point he writes that a character snubs out a cigarette as easily as he would have a bug. What does that mean? As i said, a good editor would have done wonders on this book. The riches here are worthy though of a read and I look forward to Kanon's next effort.
Rating:
Summary: An average education
Review: I have a mixed reaction to this book. As an insight to post-WW II Germany, it is splendid. As a novel it is average. The main character, Jake, is inconsistent, his motives incredible and the dialogue in which he participates tedious. After just finishing Night Soldiers by Alan Furth (which is excellent), this novel simply didn't measure up.
Rating: 
Summary: labryinthine plot gets in the way
Review: This is the third book I have read by Mr. Kannon, and I do recomend him for his ability to portray a time and place in all its dimensions: physical, historical, personal, and moral. This is no small achievment in a genre filled with tin characters and TV movie settings. In this book we are in Berlin in the summer of 1945. Kannon's descriptions of Berlin and its shell shocked citizens are affecting. Jake, the main character, lived in Berlin before the war, and through his eyes we experience his shock at the pysical destruction of the city from Allied bombs and the Russian shelling and occupation and also his shock at what Germany became under Nazi rule. There are harsh judgments made, but Kannon also attempts to understand what perhaps cannot ever be fully understood...how so many people could blind themselves to the evil going on all around them.Kannon explores the moral complexitites and horrors of the time through his characters; many of them will linger in your mind. Jake's outrage at the Holocaust(not even named yet at the time of the story) is genuine if a bit self righteous--but perhaps it is only later that someone like him would know about the ways in which the West, while not responsible for the atrocity, did so little to stop it or to provide assylum for its victims.
My one complaint, common to all Kannon's books, is that his plots go on too long, are too convoluted, and resolve in ways not altogether believable. Still, Kannon is worth reading, he will enlarge your picture of the world we live in as you read him
Rating:
Summary: A few shortcomings but otherwise very good story
Review: The book was a worth reading as a mystery and as educational about the end of WWII in Berlin. The best parts of the book were the beginning and end. The plot takes off in the beginning and grips one's attention, as does the elegant descriptions of the surroundings and mood of Berlin at the time. The characters were well-developed and realistic. The historical setting and details were obviously well-researched. However, there were several stretches in the middle of the book that distracted from the story--such as long unnecessary descriptions of the prostitution ring in Berlin and prostitutes themselves, the repeatedly revisted melodramatic arguments between the main male and female characters, and some characters brought into the story that didn't add anything and only lead to a feeling of 'loose ends' at the end of the book. The end of the book had satisfying unexpected twists and a compelling conclusion. I'm glad I read the book but wished that the book had been about 200 pages shorter, with editing of the middle half of the text. The story would make a great screenplay.
Rating:
Summary: Good in Two Dimensions
Review: The Good German is a compulsive read and a compelling portrait of Berlin in the immediate aftermath of defeat. Its chief strength is a strong sense of place--not just the landscape of shattered Berlin, but moral/emotional freeze-frames of various Germans, Jews, Russians, and Americans struggling to come to terms with the world created by the Nazis' crimes. Memorable portraits include those of a disenfranchised, fundamentally decent German police chief; a German Jew who survived by fingering other Jews in hiding; a perpetually cool British journalist; and a rigidly upright old German mathematics professor. The novel achieves some moments of high drama as characters' moral choices come into sharp relief: a Jews reveals why she worked for the Nazis; a father dissolves in grief as he recalls his SS son as a boy; a U.S. intelligence officer shreds evidence of war crimes by a coveted German scientist.While successfully bringing one of history's great crossroads to life, The Good German is limited by a kind of potboiler sensibility. At heart, it's more a Casa Blanca redux (complete with a lover-rescues-resurfaced-husband variation) than a full-souled literary engagement with its gigantic theme. The main character is essentially a superhero cipher, preposterously noble and competent. The plot is a numbingly complex and unlikely connect-the-dots. The prose is burdened with a tired,flat overlay of stream of consciousness in tough-guy sentence fragments. The love interest is cheesy and cliched. The book made me want to read and know more about Germany after the war -- but left me thirsty for a deeper novelistic consciousness (maybe Gunther Grass?--haven't read him) to see into the life of things.
Rating:
Summary: Post-War Intrigue and Romance
Review: Set in torn Berlin after the war, the story revolves around a flight of reporters and a young Tully. The main character Jake writes for Colliers and passionately searches for his German love left behind, Lena. The suspense grows and builds in his Lena search, coupled with the search for who killed young Tully. The author writes well, revealing just enough of the plot to keep one intrigued and reading on. His knowledge of post-war affairs between the Big Three and Berlin is the twine which holds it all together, and the journalist's ever relentless search for the scoop dominates. Found it all so good reading, all making sense, except left me a little lost at the end, trying to reweave all the fibers that were hidden. However, a marvelously composed tale touching on many emotions of war torn countries and relationships.
Rating:
Summary: A great book
Review: Kanon is able to discuss the troubling ethical dimensions of post-war Germany. His picture of Berlin is gritty and compelling.
Rating:
Summary: Berlin after the war
Review: What was life like in Berlin after the fall of the Nazis, when the conquering Allies first took over the government? This very well-written book answers that question, and in addition, gives us a fine mystery to solve along with the hero. We see the condition of the city and its inhabitants, and also get a good glimpse into the Allied administration, perhaps a closer, and more searching, look than we really want to see, after all of these years. There's a mysterious death at the site of the Potsdam conference, and from that flows all of the rest of the action. There's a love story that also drives the plot, because it becomes essentially tied into the murder. Out hero displays a lot of stubbornness in the face of history, and from the view of hindsight it seems that he was one of the last of the "true believers" in the righteousness of the Allied cause. The Allied governments don't come out in this book as quite the upright folks we'd like to believe, but history has been kind to them, so we must pity him for his naivete. You'll enjoy this book, so I recommend that you read it.
Rating:
Summary: Outstanding!
Review: The Good German is a rarity---a thinking person's thriller. The characters are extremely well-developed, the moral issues raised by the story (and setting) are really thought-provoking and the plot is fascinating.
Jake, an American journalist, returns to Berlin in 1945 to search for the married woman with whom he had an affair before being forced to leave Berlin. While Jake manages to find Lena, his attempts to persuade her to join him become hopelessly convoluted when she insists on finding and notifying her husband of her decision to leave him. Lena's husband, it turns out, was a rocket scientist/mathematician who worked for the Nazis and who is now the target of a concentrated search by both the Russians and Americans (who want not to try her husband but rather to exploit his knowledge of weapons and missles).
While Russian and American intelligence are courting former Nazi scientists, Nazi and Nazi sympathizers who lack valuable knowledge are being systematically put on trial by both the Russians and Americans. The parallel story of Renate, a Jewish Berliner who worked for the Nazis as a "catcher" (someone who identified and caught Jews for the Nazis while under threat of death) presents an incredible counterpoint to the story of Lena's husband.
This is not a book which you can easily put down---the writing is great and the story moves along quickly. But it is the issues or moral responsibility which will remain with you long after you have finished the book. You won't regret buying this book!
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