The Arms Maker of Berlin: A Novel [Abridged, Audiobook, CD] [Audio CD]

Dan Fesperman (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: August 4, 2009

When Nat Turnbull, a history professor who specializes in the German resistance, gets the news that his estranged mentor, Gordon Wolfe, has been arrested for possession of stolen World War II archives, he’s hardly surprised that, even at the age of eighty-four, Gordon has gotten himself in trouble. But what’s in the archives is staggering: a spymaster’s trove missing since the end of the war, one that Gordon has always claimed is full of “secrets you can’t find anywhere else . . . live ammunition.” Yet key documents are still missing, and Nat believes Gordon has hidden them. The FBI agrees, and when Gordon is found dead in jail, the Bureau dispatches Nat to track down the material, which has also piqued the interest of several dangerous competitors. As he follows a trail of cryptic clues left behind by Gordon, assisted by an attractive academic with questionable motives, Nat’s quest takes him to Bern and Berlin, where his path soon crosses that of Kurt Bauer, an aging German arms merchant still hoarding his own wartime secrets. As their stories—and Gordon’s—intersect across half a century, long-buried exploits of deceit, devotion, and doomed resistance begin working their way to the surface. And as the stakes rise, so do the risks . . .

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Four missing documents from WWII provide the fuel for Fesperman's fine stand-alone thriller. The FBI hires Nat Turnbull, a Nazi expert at a second-tier New England university, to find the documents, but Nat soon discovers that the agency has reasons other than historical integrity for wanting them found: to keep a lid on certain war-era sins committed by a German industrialist whose enormous company has been a major weapons supplier to the West. As Turnbull shuttles between Europe and the U.S., he manages to stay a step ahead of a mysterious killer who's knocking off anyone who may know something about the missing files. Fesperman (The Prisoner of Guantánamo) convincingly evokes the fraying Reich in 1944, a time of shifting allegiances when many Germans focused on positioning themselves for a Hitler-less future, though the who and why of all the recent killings remain somewhat murky. Still, readers who like a bit of history with their thrills will be thoroughly satisfied. (Aug.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved. --This text refers to an out of print or unavailable edition of this title.

Review

“Compelling . . . nonstop action.”—The Baltimore Sun

"'Intelligent thriller' is almost an oxymoron . . . Which may be why novels like Dan Fesperman's are so rare . . . Fesperman just can't help drawing on his experience as a journalist covering foreign conflicts. And that experience puts the meat on the intricate bone structure of his thriller plots. You come away from a Fesperman novel not only abuzz with the exhilaration of the chase, but also aware that you've absorbed something of the complexity of the world's conflicts . . . Fesperman's characters in The Arms Maker of Berlin, particularly Bauer, are smartly imagined and subtly drawn."—San Francisco Chronicle
 
"A smoothly accelerating thriller . . . Fesperman is a skillful, unpretentious writer who deftly incorporates his extensive knowledge of the period." —Boston Globe
 
"Well-crafted entertainment that also delivers complex truths about warfare and survival." —Kirkus Reviews
 
"Fesperman convincingly evokes the fraying Reich in 1944 . . . Readers who like a bit of history with their thrills will be thoroughly satisfied." —Publishers Weekly
 
"Fesperman writes well. His characters are believable, and the strong and credible plot will specially appeal to fans of World War II espionage fiction." —Library Journal
 
"This one is definitely not your out-of-the-box spy caper, thus highly recommended . . . In the jaded world of the post-modern spy novel, there are no good guys or bad guys, no black or white—just a thousand shades of gray. This combination of anomie and espionage can get tiresome after awhile, but in Fesperman's newest novel, he spices things up."—Booklist (starred) 
--This text refers to the Paperback edition.

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Product Details

• Audio CD
• Publisher: Brilliance Audio on CD (August 4, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1423346718
• ISBN-13: 978-1423346715
• Product Dimensions: 7 x 5 x 1.4 inches
• Average Customer Review: 4.1 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (26 customer reviews)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

22 of 22 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Betrayals, past and present..., August 13, 2009

By 

S. McGee (New York, NY) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Arms Maker of Berlin (Hardcover)

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.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Nazi intrigue and festering secrets make good suspense, September 14, 2009

By 

Lynn Harnett (Marathon, FL USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Arms Maker of Berlin (Hardcover)

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.

6 of 6 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Fast Trip Back, January 23, 2010

By 

Thomas S. Fiske (Fullerton, CA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: The Arms Maker of Berlin (Hardcover)

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.