Customer Reviews

The Arms Maker of Berlin

5 star:		(11)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(3)
2 star:		(3)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I love reading great suspense novels, so when the guy sitting opposite me on the subway was so engrossed in his book that he missed his stop altogether and didn't realize the fact for nearly 10 minutes, I had to wonder what he was reading. Turns out it was Dan Fesperman's latest thriller -- a book by an author I hadn't even heard of. The plot seemed intriguing enough, combining as it did a historical mystery revolving around the fate of a White Rose Nazi resistance cell in Berlin just after the fall of Stalingrad with the appearance of long-missing archival material about the OSS's wartime operations in Bern, just across the Swiss border. So I snapped it up, and don't regret it despite some rather stereotypical characters and wince-inducing writing. ("Keep working with me and you will have a far better chance of getting all that you want", the 21st century femme fatale trying to solve both the contemporary mystery and the historical puzzle tells our hero. He muses to himself, predictably enough: "The remark was stirring on several levels."

Nevertheless, during a summer that has brought some disappointing books from authors whose work I've previously enjoyed (Daniel Silva, flagging in the Gabriel Allon series; Christopher Reichs, still not at his best; Richard North Patterson in the yet-to-be released The Spire, a shadow of his best work), this was a very welcome addition to my mindless summer reading list. As Nat Turnbull scurries from North America to Europe and back again in search of the clues that will help him resolve the mystery that links the OSS with the White Rose operation and that his academic mentor (a former OSS spy) had long concealed, I began to understand exactly why that guy had missed his subway stop. At its heart, this is a great story of secrets and betrayals, full of gnarly twists and turns that suspense book addicts will revel in, and one that displays Fesperman's knowledge of the worlds of academia and espionage, as well as giving the reader fascinating insight into what life might have been like during wartime Berlin. Best of all, none of the twists feel contrived or telegraphed so far in advance that they lose their punch, even the final whopper set at the site of the former Gestapo prison in Berlin. That all more than makes up for the eye-rolling I found myself doing when reading Fesperman's characterization of Berta Heinkel, the young German woman who may be Turnbull's ally in the quest for the documents or his biggest rival. (I didn't need a big romantic subplot to make this a great read, but Berta emerged as too quirky to be true; indeed, the characters are often less convincing than the plot.)

There are stronger Nazi/contemporary suspense novels out there -- my favorites would include two stellar early offerings from Greg Iles, Spandau Phoenix: A Novel and Black Cross) and while this isn't that good (and far from as good as the works by Alan Furst, who sets all his books in the 1930s and the wartime years), it's still a thumping good read. And so I went off and downloaded two more of his books onto my Kindle to see if they can be just as effective in distracting me from the summertime heat and humidity.

A couple of ambitious history professors go up against a ruthless assassin (and sometimes each other) to track down four missing Nazi-era files in Fesperman's (The Small Boat of Great Sorrows) latest political thriller.

Snatched from his desk deep in the archives of his university library in the middle of the night, Professor Nat Turnbull, specialist in the Nazi resistance movement, is understandably suspicious. But his abductor proves to be an FBI agent without a minute to lose. Turns out Nat's old mentor, Gordon Wolfe, now 84, has been arrested in possession of top-secret FBI archives, an intelligence trove stolen at the end of WWII.

Now the FBI needs to know what's in them - particularly anything having to do with The White Rose, a German resistance group, crushed before the war's end.

The files detail Allied intelligence operations in Switzerland, mostly centered around Allen Dulles, later the first civilian director of the CIA. Gordon always claimed to be one of his operatives, recruited after his plane was shot down over Switzerland.

But Gordon's war record has recently been called into question. Gordon blames the feds for that and tells Nat to dig deep and dig fast and the truth will set them both free.

Next to approach Nat is an attractive young scholar from East Germany. Berta Heinkel tells him that four files - the only ones that really matter - are missing. She believes they contain the facts about the betrayal of the Berlin chapter of the White Rose and the wartime activities of a powerful German industrialist who was just a 17-year-old boy at the time.

Intrigued, not sure who or what to believe, Nat hedges his bets. But Gordon dies of a heart attack in jail, jurisdictional fights break out and Nat teams up with Berta to grab what they can before it's all whisked away.

Armed with stolen copies of the archives and a cryptic parcel Gordon left for Nat, the pair track down wartime leads in Bern, Germany and the U.S. Despite their growing attraction, however, they are definitely not a team.

The intricate, suspenseful story alternates between Nat's view and the wartime memories of Kurt Bauer, the lovesick son of a German armaments maker.

Fesperman vividly evokes Germany in the last years of the war - a place of uncertainty, oppression and paranoia, rife with scheming and treachery. Much of Berlin is in ruins, the war seems lost, but doubt is treason.

Still, those with the means must try and safeguard their future for a world without Hitler. Bauer comes of age in a smog of dread, youthful fervor and blundering and his actions reverberate down to the present day.

A smart, fast-paced tale of heroism, tragedy and guilty secrets worth killing for more than half a century later, this will appeal to anyone interested in World War II atmosphere and intrigue, however unlikely it seems that an academic, no matter how ambitious and romantic, would put his life in peril over some Nazi secrets.

Dan Fesperman accomplished two tasks with his book "Arms Maker of Berlin." First, he told well an interesting story that took me back to the German WWII episode of sixty years ago. In that, his book was like a comfortable pair of old shoes. But he did something else.

The author expertly wove together two stories--one from the past and one in the present. This is not easily done, but he did it well.

I recommend it both to WWII buffs and to readers who just plain want to be entertained.

A few things irritated me about this book. The central device seemed both unnecessarily complex and not very plausible: that the FBI would use a civilian historian to dig up secrets for them. I just could never buy the central premise that the feds had this guy strung out like a worm on a hook. They could and would do their own investigations. The action shifts back and forth between two eras, WWII Europe and the present, and the author makes excessive use of that fact in creating cliffhanger endings to chapters. It's a device that should be used sparingly. After all, while it does create tension, it also interrupts the flow of a story. I realize that this is a personal preference and other readers may not feel the same way, but I like to be immersed in a setting and really savor it, not jerked back and forth over and over again from one setting to the next. Fesperman also makes use of a form of dramatic irony that should be used very sparingly: that in which the reader is pointedly reminded that there is something that he or she doesn't know, but is known to the narrator and to certain characters. Fesperman's use of this technique is reminiscent of Dan Brown's "DaVinci Code." I don't consider the comparison complimentary. Often the characters do and say things that make it impossible to suspend disbelief. For example, at one point a woman who is a virtual stranger to the protagonist is caught red-handed attempting to steal materials from an archive. "I can vouch for her!" the hero exclaims. I thought, "No, you idiot, you can't. You hardly know her, she is a suspect in the death of your friend, she has 'Femme Fatale' written all over her in blood red letters, and she just got caught trying to purloin research materials."

In all I would position "The Arms Maker of Berlin" between Dan Brown and Alan Furst in terms of style and substance. It's not an awful book, and is entertaining enough for reading on a plane, but I can't say I'm glad I splurged on the hardback version.

After reading The Arms Maker of Berlin and The Prisoner of Guantánamo I'd like to thank Dan Fesperman for enriching my life as have Alan Furst and Robert Wilson. The Arms Maker of Berlin weaves a plausible and intricate plot and peoples it with psychologically complicated and therefore interesting characters. Kurt Bauer's tormented and tragic life is exceptionally thought-provoking. Well done.

"The Arms Maker Of Berlin" by Dan Fesperman. Thorndike Press, Waterville, ME 2009.

Some little spoilers here....

This is an excellent spy novel, with at least three, perhaps four or five, story lines, depending upon how you count all the stories being told. The author, Dan Fesperman, has done a great job of running all these different story lines and then bringing all of them to a resolution in the last few chapters of the book.

On the first level, there is the conflict between Professor Nat Turnbull and his aging mentor, Gordon Wolfe. Turnbull and Wolfe have become estranged and the author "kills off" Wolfe before the estrangement is cleared up. This is required since the book's entire search would be unnecessary if Gordon Wolfe were available to answer simple questions.

On the second level, the story revolves around Kurt Bauer, the surviving son of the scion of the Bauer Arms Factories. Much of the book has the reader wondering if Kurt Bauer was part of the anti-Hitler organization known as the "White Rose", and, if so, what could the missing files, of 1944-1945, contain that would be damaging to the post 1990s Kurt Bauer?

Then, the third story centers on a German woman, Berta Heinkel, who was from the DDR, the old East Germany, and, like Turnbull and Wolfe, she was a history professor. Early on in the book, it would seem that her main target was Kurt Bauer. It takes some reading to determine why Heinkel would want to destroy Bauer`s public image. But, on a sub-level, Berta Heinkel provides some sexual scenes.

Then, in perhaps a fourth story, the FBI is bugging Wolfe, Turnbull, and when she enters the story, Berta Heinkel. The author portrays the modern American FBI as intrusive as the German Gestapo of 1944-1945. "We have our reasons" applies to both groups. Why would the FBI want to discredit Wolfe's wartime service as an agent (codenamed "Icarus"), in Switzerland? While working for the famous spymaster, Allen Dulles, what crucial files did Wolfe (Icarus) abscond with and where did he hide the files? Why were the files so important? The FBI and CIA adversarial relationship is a sub-story here.

The fifth story line is the poignant love story of young people in 1944-1945 Nazi Germany. This sub-plot lies beneath all of the stories being told. All in all, the ending is something that is not expected, with a few hints only towards the end of the book. Good job!

The author describes scenes in modern day upstate New York and then the hunt for the files takes Nat Turnbull to Baltimore, and then another chapter describes Kurt Bauer 60 or so years ago, when he is falling in love with Liesl Folkerts. Chapters alternate that way. Back to Nat Turnbull, and off to Bern, Switzerland, he goes on a jet plane. Zurich, London, and Berlin. If you have experienced jet lag, I think you will agree that the author has made his chief protagonist, Turnbull, into some sort of a superman as he bounces from one side of the Atlantic to the other, all the while attempting to get there before the chief competitor, Berta Heinkel. On page 287 (Large Type Book), the author uses the word "maundering", which I had not seen before; it is British usage. On page 490, he uses "stewardess" when today's politically correct name is "flight attendant".

The "Arms Maker of Berlin" is a very intriguing novel about a history professor named Nat Turnbull. The story begins with the professor being abducted from his office by the FBI who wants him to recover missing OSS documents from World War II concerning his mentor. The documents have to do with a resistance cell in Berlin called the White Rose and an industrialist millionaire who would like those files to disappear.

The plot takes place in current time, as well as Nazi Berlin, alternating effortlessly between chapters, but most of the adventures take place when Nat and a German researcher named Berta, try to uncover the mystery and are sent on a goose chase by Nat's mentor while avoiding everyone from the FBI to the Iranians.

I thought this book was engrossing, exciting, well paced and surprising (I did not foresee the ending) as Nat said to his students at the end "I hope to show you the ways in which history is a living entity".

A real page turner for me. Recommend it to those who like WWII and Cold War era spy novels. This one bounces back-and-forth between the 1940s and "today" in Bern, Berlin, and the U.S. The hero is Nat Turnbull, a History professor who gets mixed up in a high-stakes mystery that just exploded around his mentor. FBI agents, a beautiful history professor who grew up in Communist East Germany, Iranians, resistance fighters and old Nazis round out the cast. Fesperman brings to life the horrors of living in a society where you can trust no one, not even those you love. He doesn't seem to have an axe to grind and doesn't 'moralize.' The result is a book that has left me with a lot to think about..

This book successfuly combines two story telling tactics.********************There's the telling of two stories separated by time and geographical location. There's the story of the title character, Kurt Bauer, in wartime Berlin with conflicting interests that tear him between a Hitler supporter and a dissident.********************Then there's the story of the present day history professor searching for missing WWII files, files also being sought by those with other reasons for finding them. The search is further complicated by an apparant ally who has her own agenda and by the purposely cryptic clues left by the earlier possessor of said files.********************This ssn't as smoothly paced as I personally would like, but it is engrossing. It's not impossible to lay down, and yet is engrossing enough to keep one's attention. I can't give it my personal highest recommendation, but it's sure ss heck woth your time.

A convoluted novel full of flights across continentals, all signifying something but can't recall what. I never cared about the characters, their motavations, nor what was going on. The book takes too much detailed plodding for the little pleasure derived. Basically the story takes way too much time to tell a somewhat boring tale.