Customer Reviews

The Eye of the Abyss (Franz Schmidt, 1)

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In 1938 Nazi Germany Franz Schmidt has a good life. He is happily married to Helga and they have a delightful four year old daughter. He works as the chief internal auditor at Banhaus Wertham & Co. where he is very highly regarded by the Werthan family that owns the bank. Franz feels pretty good about himself also since he stepped in to defend a Jew attacked by Nazis three years ago at the cost of an eye though he swears he holds no grudges against the Nazis.

Franz's life changes when the Nazi Party deposits large sums of cash at Banhaus Wertham & Co. with the demand that anyone with the slightest Jewish blood be fired as the law states. Half-Jewish Fraulein Dressler, competent secretary to the bank's general director, will have to be released. Upset over the injustice, Franz decides to help Dressler while plotting to castigate Herr Dietrich, the Nazi mole just put inside the bank. Though the price of being caught could reach his beloved family, inactivity would cost Franz much more.

This is an exhilarating historical tale that takes the reader back to a highly volatile and dangerous time to be a freedom lover. The story line is fantastic as it moves rather quickly forward yet provides fully developed characters whose behavior especially reactions during crisis are brilliantly rendered. However, the key to Marshall Browne's tale is Nazi Germany on the brink of World War II that comes so alive. Author of the well written police Inspector Anders tales Mr. Browne's latest work will be on everyone's short list for the genre's best novel of the year.

Harriet Klausner

In the foreboding atmosphere of 1938 Germany, Franz Schmidt is a quiet, contented family man, proud of his Teutonic heritage, and chief auditor at Wertheim's, a venerable commercial bank that has just landed a major Nazi Party account. He's also a man who lost an eye three years earlier defending a Jew.

As in Australian author Browne's Italian Inspector Anders novels ("Inspector Anders and the Ship of Fools," "The Wooden Leg of Inspector Anders") the pace is deliberate, the protagonist deliberating. The tension builds by increments as the enormity of the bank's move into Nazi business becomes clear to the hapless bankers.

Nazi functionary Dietrich, attached to the bank, quickly homes in on Lilli Dressler, the director's Jewish secretary. As Jews have been barred from banking, Dietrich arranges to have the Gestapo arrest her. Schmidt and Lilli's boss separately attempt to save her, and when their illegal efforts fail, Dietrich is exultant. Magnanimously sparing the men from prosecution, Dietrich has them where he wants them.

In chilling increments it becomes clear that every aspect of privacy - from phone lines to family relationships, personal friendships and private histories - is compromised. Dietrich seems omnipresent. Heartsick, Schmidt's resolution hardens into a daring plan of heroism and revenge.

Browne has captured the Nazis' fanatical mania for control, their mastery of detail and intimidation, their paranoia and arrogance. Schmidt's complexities reveal a tangle of motivations, not all of which he understands, or admires in himself. Events build, from the first slow tightening of the noose to a choking breathlessness. A masterful thriller, as intelligent as it is dark.

Writing a novel is like a document of consciousnes, and since conscious today USA, is not like the conscious of Germany's Weimar Republic of 1938, can we have a truly realistic novel of the times? Unfortunately, today USA is very much like the early Weimar Republic. The Reichstag Fire is like September 11th. The laws of The Patriot Act are like the laws & practices being implemented in Hitler's early Germany for their Homeland Security. Their special channel(s) is a phrase not only becomming familiar with the Herr Franz Schmidt of 1938, but those today familiar with the official lies leading the USA into Iraq & Afghanistan.
Still, the above is all but background to the real story being told: THE STEALING FROM THE BANKS BY THE NAZI PARTY.
I couldn't help but think, as I was reading this novel, about the crooked members of the Republican Party of Bush(Savings & Loan, the elder/Treasury, the younger) and the subsequent crooks of the Obama Democratic Party(Larry Summers, Henry Paulson, etc.).
In the novel there are a few good people who try to put the criminal Nazis at task & at each others throats, to foil some of their vast looting enterprises. I'd like to think their are some Franz Schmidts today in our mists, working to bring current criminals, not only to light, but to jail. So far, we've bailed out the crooks & given them billions of dollars in bonuses.
At least in 1938, a few of the criminal came to their judgement day.
So, in short, reading this novel was like reading a parallel 1938/2010 looting extravaganza(imagination?).
One story has been told, the looting of the Weimar Republic of Germany.
Still, I can't wait for the parallel/other to end.
Either they will stop stealing & looting, or like Russia, an end...?

P.S. google: Keiser Report 68: Aug 12, 2010