Rating: 
Summary: he's not improving
Review: Jake Geismar, formerly one of Murrow's boys with CBS Radio in Berlin, returns to the defeated city
to cover the Potsdam Conference for Collier's magazine. This welcome assignment affords him the
opportunity to try and track down his pre-War lover Lena Brandt, wife of a brilliant mathematician
who ended up working in the Nazi rocket program. As he searches through the rubble of the
devastated city and navigates the corruption and black markets, Jake also becomes involved in a
murder mystery, surrounding the shooting of a venal American G.I. It quickly becomes evident that
the two investigations are intertwined as Jake uncovers a covert battle between American and Soviet
intelligence operatives aimed at collecting as many Nazi scientists as they can get their respective hands
on, both sides needing to pick their brains to gain an advantage in the Third World War that obviously
looms on the horizon.Mr. Kanon, as in his earlier thriller Los Alamos, makes effective use of the historic setting, letting the
actual situation provide a constant background tension. He also creates a series of characters whose
motivations and ethical dilemmas are sufficiently complex as to make it seem like he takes the moral
dimension of his tale seriously. But again, as in his earlier book, the author fails miserably in fleshing
out the full moral context of the story. Obviously one has to feel some qualms about the crimes that were excused or overlooked in our haste
to rebuild Germany and to get ahold of Nazi technology and expertise that had made Germany such a
formidable military power, but Mr. Kanon ignores the fact that we had just spent four years ignoring
equally repellent Soviet crimes while they helped us defeat the Nazis. By 1945 it was way too late to
reclaim our spiritual virginity, we'd already bedded down with one evil, all we did after the war was
hop into a different bed, and at least in the latter case we'd defeated the Germans before we
collaborated with them. Though FDR seems to have deluded himself about the true nature of the
Soviets, Winston Churchill was realistic enough to acknowledge that they were evil. Criticized by his
political cohorts for being overenthusiastic about the Russian alliance, Churchill said : If Hitler invaded Hell, I would make at least a favourable reference to the Devil in the House of
Commons. The comparison is entirely apt. Personally, I think it was a mistake to ally ourselves with the USSR in the first place, I'd have left
them and the Nazis to grind themselves into a bloody pulp on the Eastern Front. In the event, even
after helping the Soviets conquer all of Eastern Europe and even with them threatening a war-weary
Western European, I think you could have made a good case for bringing American troops home after
Germany was defeated. Trying to dominate all of Europe would have so overextended the USSR that
it would have fallen apart even more quickly than it did as a result of the fifty year policy of
containment that we pursued instead. But we didn't follow either of these options; we confronted
Hitler with the Soviet Union at our side and then confronted the Soviets with a democratic West
Germany and a number of former Nazis at our side. It is utterly disingenuous to mount one's high
horse over the one moral compromise, I believe the lesser, without at least acknowledging the other. Beyond this intellectual dishonesty, there are a few other problems with the book. For one thing it is
simply too long and owes its length to quite standard chase scenes and gunplay. It doesn't help matters
either that Mr. Kanon has Jake running all over Berlin facing off with Russian generals, American
cloak and dagger types, and black marketers. George Clooney has signed to play him in the movie,
but it reads like a role for Schwarzenegger. The other problem with Jake is that his own moral
difficulties make it all too easy for those he confronts to turn the tables on him. For one thing he's an
adulterer. For another, he's manipulating people, cutting corners, and causing deaths to serve his own
purposes. And he's accompanying a conquering army; imagine how he might have acted if he'd been
trying to survive the death throes of the Third Reich. This makes his self-righteous indignation
awfully difficult to stomach. Unfortunately, Mr. Kanon is a bestselling author so no editor is going to push him to improve. He's
now settled into a formula that works well enough, but leaves the reader somewhat frustrated. A
better, more focussed, novel lurks within the too numerous pages of this just adequate thriller. GRADE : C
Rating: 
Summary: A Super Read BY Writer Joseph Kanon
Review: The Good German takes place in Berlin the year is 1945--a wonderful story that will hold the readers attention throughout the entire story. Mr. Kanon has certainly done a lot of research in the creating of this must read story. 'Two Thumbs Up' to this very talented writer on a job well done.
Rating: 
Summary: Will they publish anything?
Review: I started out very excited, reading a novel about something I love. Well 160 pages into it I realized I'd been had, this is a contrived over the top pulp novel with no reason to be called good literature.
Rating:
Summary: Incredibly ponderously written, laborious reading
Review: The author obviously did his research, and he wants to prove it by going over the most minute details ad nauseum. This is one of the most tedious books I've ever tried to read, and one of only perhaps half a dozen I've had to give up on in the last 40 years. I think it's unfortunate that it is so poorly done, because the essential story could have had merit if the author wasn't so overburdened in his love of detail and too many names. He also relies on continually repeating a description of wartown Berlin. After the first dozen or so examples, it's time to move plot, not focus on setting. I regretfully suggest you skip this book. Read the Publisher's Weekly report above. They can be harsh but are frequently accurate. I gave my copy of this book to the library's fundraiser - unread beyond 30 pages.
Rating:
Summary: One of the best thrillers I've read this year!
Review: I originally bought this book because it was a thriller, a genre I enjoy, and because it takes place in Berlin, where I lived for nine years. I really didn't expect to like it. However, within the first few pages, I was hooked! Each clue and event compelled me to keep turning pages. The characters were well developed and believable. I also enjoyed the descriptions of Berlin in 1945, and the philosophy behind the title and the book. Who are the "war criminals", to what extent are a people guilty of what their government does. etc.
Rating:
Summary: Has it all, a thriller which is also a serious novel.
Review: Unlike so many other thrillers, this is a subtle and thought-provoking novel, a search for moral truth within a mystery and a love story. Creating fully developed main characters, filled with the good intentions and personal failings that make us all human, Kanon portrays the ethical dilemmas of the occupying forces in a devastated Berlin, just as the Potsdam Conference begins. The Good German, an ironic title, explores the practice of American policymakers of "sanitizing" the Nazi connections of German scientists so that they may be spirited into the U.S. for work on the atomic bomb. By transforming them into "good Germans," as opposed to the "bad Germans" who will face war crimes trials, the American "good guys" reveal themselves to be as morally compromised, perhaps, as the German scientists, willing to stop at nothing, including murder, in order to keep these men from falling into the hands of the Soviets. Kanon's eye for the telling detail is unerring. To fix the scope of the devastation, he remarks: "Buildings, like soldiers, were expected casualties of war. But the trees were gone too, all of them...The dense forest of the Tiergarten, all the winding paths...burned down to a vast open field littered with dark charcoal stumps." He refers to those Jews who tried to delay their fates in the only way open to them as "U-boats," hungry people who walked anonymously around the city all day, every day, so that they could not be identified by "friends," sometimes captured and deported when they took their worn out shoes to be repaired. Nazi big shots are "golden pheasants." The Russians are said to "pack up the power plants and anything shiny and hope for the best," while the Americans searching for scientists were doing "patriotic looting." The several subplots--the search for Emil Brandt, the love story of Jake and Lena, the conflict between war crimes investigators and the State Department, in conjunction with U.S. industry, and the difficulties of sharing power with the brutal Russians--are smoothly integrated into a thoroughly engrossing narrative, which, in combination with the unique characters, allow the reader to keep track of what's going on and stay involved till the end. I cannot attest to the accuracy of the history, but I came away from the novel with vivid images of the level of devastation in Berlin and a new appreciation of the difficulties faced by occupying forces.
Rating:
Summary: a sophisticated thriller
Review: I read this book in two sittings and only because I'm too old to stay up ALL night and still be productive the next day. That is to say, this is one exciting read -- I even blocked out my fear of flying as I zoned in on the absorbing story during my recent flight. I enjoyed Los Alamos, but I'm happy to say that Kanon has continued to develop as a writer -- this book is by far his best yet. Kanon does a masterful job portraying post-war Berlin around the time of the Potsdam conference and all the intrigue, scientist-chasing and frenetic behavior during the last days of the Nazi regime. I don't know if Kanon meant to tip his hat to Hemingway's Jake Barnes, but I found his Jake to be an extremely well drawn portrait of our hero-journalist. The pacing is excellent, the dialogue credible and the plot absolutely mind bending. In terms of genre, I'd put this between Le Carre, Folliet, Clancy combining the best elements. Ultimately, Kanon outdoes them all for just plain good writing. My head is still spinning from the labyrintine plot -- read this one with a friend so you can compare notes. If I could even find a small quibble, I'd say the fortune telling scene was a bit over the top and perhaps Jake's original motivation to pursue a murder mystery once he found Lena, but I was very willing to suspend any disbelief. The Good German succeeds on every level (also a very touching love story) and is already one of my very favorites from this year. Superb reading from one of the best writers out there -- don't miss it.
Rating:
Summary: A thriller for our time.
Review: This resonant tale of love among the ruins is the best yet from Kanon, who takes what is often a tired form -- the historical thriller -- and charges it with new moral intensity. The plot keeps the pages turning with all the speed you'd want from a thriller. But at heart the book is a darkly glittering meditation on civic and personal responsibility. Kanon's ear for period dialogue seems faultless, and his feel for postwar Berlin with its moonscape of collapsed buildings is an imaginative triumph. Jake Geismar, the book's journalist protagonist, is a period piece himself - tough, principled and yet tender (think Bogart). His lover Lena, who has experienced the full cruelty of life in bombed and occupied Berlin, is the complex European to this brash American. The plot is fleshed out with vivid supporting characters -- a business-minded American congressman with dubious priorities, an attractive Jewish Berliner who survives the war by turning in fellow Jews, an American lawyer who buries himself in reams of Nazi record-keeping in what appears to be a lonely mission to bring Nazis to justice, a black marketeer ex-policeman. The reverberations of September 11th give added richness to this story of life trying to knit itself back together after catastrophe. It's a continuously engaging book, but into its many bright colors are woven the dark threads of evil which more than ever seem part of the fabric of human life.
Rating:
Summary: A taut murder investigation set in 1945 post-war Berlin
Review: A news correspondent in Berlin before the war, Jake Geismar, now returns to cover the Potsdam Conference and write articles for Colliers Magazine. Jake's highest priority is finding his former lover Lena, the wife of a pre-war university mathematics professor and later Nazi scientist working in the German rocket program. When a lieutenant that flew into Berlin with Jake is found dead by Russian guards at a reception near Potsdam with thousands of occupation marks in his pockets, Jake can't resist becoming involved in the investigation. Jake's search for answers leads to involvement with the Army CID (Criminal Investigation), Army Intelligence, and Russian Intelligence. Jake enlists the aid of a former savvy German policeman and people in the black market to find the reasons behind the murder. As his investigation proceeds, the situation becomes increasingly dangerous and he finds himself not knowing who to trust. This is an interesting read with more than a murder investigation at its core. The author paints a vivid picture of Berlin immediately after the end of World War II. The destruction was massive and disease, hunger, and displaced persons were everywhere. The Berliners had to degrade themselves to eat and survive. The birth of a huge black market and the chance for riches infected the Allies as well as the Germans. Destroying information and creating false documents to protect those guilty of war crimes was a thriving business. The tension between the Western Allies and the Russians was at a dangerous level and the competition between these former Allies for the services of German scientists was intense.
Rating:
Summary: wonderful atmosphere
Review: This book takes place in Berlin 1945 and mostly is about the devastation, the beginning of the cold war, and the hero's bafflement that it could all have happened. A murder, which ultimately turns out to have political connections, is interspersed, and held my interest, but the murder is really subsidiary to the philosophical questions -- who, if anyone, is a "good" german? or for that matter, a "good" american or russian?
I loved this book for its character development and thoughtfulness. If, however, you read mysteries primarily for action, this one is not for you.
|
