One by one, over a period of several years, the wife and children of a prominent Hamburg citizen are being slain. Von Ditfurth has crafted a breathtaking thriller that highlights in vivid detail how present the German past is today.
Book Description
Editorial Reviews
From Publishers Weekly
German historian Ditfurth's fictional alter ego, Josef Stachelmann, makes an engaging protagonist in this well-crafted crime thriller, the first in a new series. Stachelmann, an academic based in Hamburg, is popular with students, but the thesis he needs to complete to get tenure has stalled amid an overwhelming mass of papers the professor calls his mountain of shame. He's roused from his rut by an old classmate, Oskar Winter, now a local police commissioner, who enlists his help in solving a baffling series of crimes that have claimed over the years the life of the wife and two children of respected local businessman Maximilian Holler. Despite Holler's sterling reputation, the probe's discovery of some unusual real estate deals suggests he's hiding something, perhaps connected with Holler's Nazi father. The author sensitively handles the difficult issue of how modern Germany has dealt with its past. (Mar.)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
About the Author
Christian V. Ditfurth, born in 1953, is a historian. He lives and works in Lubeck as a freelance writer and editor. He has pulbished numerous non-fiction titles on politics and history, and in recent years , several highly acclaimed novels. A Paragon of Virtue is the first of a series of books featuring Stachelmann. It is the first of Ditfurth's books to be published in English.
Product Details
Would you like to update product info or give feedback on images?
|
More About the Author
Discover books, learn about writers, read author blogs, and more.
Customer Reviews
|
Share your thoughts with other customers:
|
||||||||||||||||||||||
|
Most Helpful Customer Reviews
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
History haunts,
By
This review is from: A Paragon of Virtue (Hardcover)
I was quite pleased with this book. Professor Stachelmann is not your usual leading man. He's not a heartthrob, he doesn't have his act together, he's not powerful, heck, he's not even particularly healthy. But like many of the characters in this book, he feels real. I like how von Ditfurth writes the relationships between his characters. The initial meeting between Stachelmann and his old friend, Ossi, is just as awkward and uncomfortable as you'd expect. Stachelmann and Anne's flirty interactions run hot and cold as Stachelmann deals with his insecurities and indecision about her, but they always feel natural. He's not a smooth operator, nor does he pretend to be.
Behind it all, Stachelmann is a historian, and he's driven by the search for the truth. He's not trying to figure out who's behind the murders for the sake of the father/husband, but because as details come to light, it's a mystery he can't help but try to solve. At the end, the mystery isn't so much about who, but about why. As things come to a conclusion, you discover that in Germany, some wounds may never heal. This is the first book I've read in a long time that didn't deal with Nazis in an overdone, cliche way. The German perspective really added something new for me.
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Tentacles From the Nazi Era,
By
This review is from: A Paragon of Virtue (Hardcover)
Stachelmann, the unlikely hero of this mystery set in 2001 in Germany, is a fortyish historian working at the lowest academic level because he can't get himself together enough to write the book that is necessary for a tenured appointment. He has major self-esteem issues and fears his own office because it contains all the documents that he has assembled (and never reviewed) heaped up in what he thinks of as "the mountain of shame." As if this weren't enough, his severe rheumatoid arthritis often makes performing his ordinary duties difficult and painful.
Stachelmann gets drawn into a murder case after meeting a friend from his undergrad days for drinks. The friend is now a homicide cop in Hamburg and is working on a case of multiple murders. Over a two year period the wife and two of the three children of a successful, well-connected and revered real estate mogul have been killed. The cop is only venting because the case bothers him; but, when a piece of evidence may connect to the Nazi era, the cop asks Stachelmann (whose specialty is that period) what he makes of it. Soon Stachelmann concludes that the case is rooted in the Nazi past and the activities of the SS, the SA and the Gestapo. The police don't buy this and Stachelmann becomes nearly obsessed with the case, especially when he realizes (to his immense shock and terror) that he is in deadly danger himself. The story is a good one and shows how the Nazi past reaches into the German present and is still a major personal and cultural issue. The old cliché question "what did you do in the war, daddy" can raise sensitive and very painful issues for individuals, families and even governments (apparently government tax and finance records from the Third Reich are still closed to researchers because of what they show about theft of Jewish property---and those who did it). The book is translated from the German but for the most part flows well in English although there are dialogue passages that are a bit clunky. The latter may be because the dialogue has to be used to explain things about the Nazi era in the course of supposedly normal conversation, something that is, to say the least, unlikely to occur in real life. The main characters are well drawn for the most part and nobody is simple cardboard. It's a good story nicely told. Besides, we should all support any crime fiction that features an academic historian as a hero.
4.0 out of 5 stars
Excellent German Mystery,
This review is from: A Paragon of Virtue (Hardcover)
I read this book in the original German and found it very entertaining. It is enlightening about how much the past informs the present. Those who find comedic scenes set in Academia will find much to appreciate here as well.
Share your thoughts with other customers: Create your own review
|
|
Tags Customers Associate with This Product(What's this?)Click on a tag to find related items, discussions, and people.
|
Sell a Digital Version of This Book in the Kindle Store
If you are a publisher or author and hold the digital rights to a book, you can sell a digital version of it in our Kindle Store.
Learn more
Customer Discussions
|
This product's forum
Active discussions in related forums
Search Customer Discussions
|
Related forums
|
