79 of 80 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
The genesis of evil, May 9, 2006
I found City of Shadows to be magnetic, haunting and tightly constructed. The dialogue is well crafted, the plot, in the shadow of what was about to occur, frightening, and the unexpected twists and surprises, plentiful.
Berlin in the 1920's, once a magnificent city, had been disgraced. Germany, late to come to the industrial revolution, had been promised an overwhelming victory in the Great War three years earlier, only to have a crushing military and social defeat. The humiliating Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was forced to sign in order to surrender, was to the German people not merely an acknowledgement of defeat but rather an admission of wrong.
Inflation was rampant. A cup of coffee was 1000 marks at breakfast, 1800 by lunch. In the streets, the socialist thugs fought bloody battles with the communist thugs. The Catholics distrusted the Protestants; the farmers distrusted the laborers. Germany needed a hero. Would they get one? No. They got the devil himself. But in the meantime . . . .
Franklin begins a tale of murder, conspiracy, romance, anti-semitism, integrity and redemption. Prince Nick, a displaced Russian, owns a series of cabarets in Berlin, catering to the diverse tastes and odd 'late night' habits of his clientele. He hires Esther Solomonova, a Jewish refugee from the Russian Revolution, once lovely, extremely intelligent, multi-lingual, but terribly scarred from her experiences during the fall of the Romanov Empire when the Czar and his entire family were gunned down by the Bolsheviks.
Rumors (existing to this day) abound that one of the Romanov children escaped death when her siblings fell upon her. She later lived, hidden by revolutionaries still loyal to the Czar.
Always on the lookout to make more money, inflation or not, Nick finds an inmate in a local Bedlam-like hospital who has a strange past. We learn that this woman, whom Nick names 'Anna Anderson,' was an intended but yet unexplained target of a murderer, and Nick concludes, against the analysis of Esther, that this is the missing Princess Anastasia, daughter of the late Czar. Nick's goals are to make money over the unveiling of the 'lost Princess.' Esther's goals are . . . . something else.
While all of that may seem slow, it is anything but that. Franklin introduces Inspector Siegfried Schmidt, the last man in the German Police Department with integrity. Schmidt is an old fashioned 'procedure man, piecing together information, meeting Esther, being drawn to her and her odd assortment of friends. He too feels that the search for the reason as to why Anna Anderson was targeted for murder, will shed light on subsequent crimes. Murders continue as the Nazi Party rises. There's a well crafted juxtapositioning of the evil of the Nazi's and the investigation of the murderer.
Caberet bartenders, muscular doormen, women impersonators, crazy Russian villagers, socialist thugs, good cops, bad cops, and love permeate all of the chapters. The characters come alive, and like Parker's Boston, Elizabeth George's London and George Pelecanos' Washington, Berlin becomes vibrant with colors and sounds, and Franklin uses her as an odd but meaningful character as well. Additionally, I never saw the ending coming. Franklin keeps a good secret.
5 stars. An excellent read. Larry Scantlebury
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41 of 44 people found the following review helpful:
3.0 out of 5 stars
Pleasant but predictable, May 25, 2007
While I enjoyed the book, and found that it had an engaging plot and some interesting historical background, I also found the plot predictable. I saw the twist coming for half the book, and many of the other scenes were also somewhat awkwardly drawn.
The most bothersome to me, though, were the anachronisms in the book. They were small things, really, but they were so jarringly out of place that, after seeing them, I began to question whether the author's research had sound historical footing. In broad strokes it did, but she seems to regard this period of time through a very 21st century lens. Even the interactions between characters is more in tune with our own times than with the era of which she writes.
The anachronisms that stood out included specific references. First, Nick went to the airport to fly to Paris in 1922. Passenger air service was VERY rare at that time, and most of it was for long flights to colonies and protectorates in Africa, India, etc. Air transport was established for mail at this time, but passenger travel through Europe would certainly have been by train, even for the wealthy.
Esther also says that her memories are like a movie with its soundtrack, running through her mind over and over. Talkies had not yet come out in 1922. The first commercial sound picture was in 1923, but the first to be released for viewing was in 1927 - no one would have had the language to reference a "sound track" back in 1922.
Again, these are small items, but they were so obvious to me - and I am not a historian - that I have to wonder about many of the other details that she leans on for her story. I love good historical fiction because it gives me a window into a time that I can't otherwise visit. But if that fiction doesn't have a firm foundation, it's no longer giving me a clear view.
As with many historical novels I've read, this spurred me to do a bit of online research to learn more about this very difficult period in history.
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