Shadow and Light: A Novel [Hardcover]

Jonathan Rabb (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: March 31, 2009

Berlin, between the two world wars. When an executive at the renowned Ufa film studios is found dead floating in his office bathtub, it falls to Nikolai Hoffner, a chief inspector in the Kriminalpolizei, to investigate. With the help of Fritz Lang (the German director) and Alby Pimm (leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin), Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin’s sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler’s Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Being swept up in the case are Hoffner’s new lover, an American talent agent for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his two sons: Georg, who has dropped out of school to work at Ufa, and Sascha, his angry, older son, who, unknown to his father, has become fully entrenched in the new German Workers Party as the aide to its Berlin leader, Joseph Goebbels.

What a spellbinding novel Shadow and Light is, and what a novelist Jonathan Rabb has become!

When we last met Hoffner, it was 1919, and he had taken on the disappearance and death of Rosa Luxembourg in Rosa, a novel the critic John Leonard hailed as “a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux.” Shadow and Light is equally brilliant and atmospheric, and even harder to put down or shake off. Like Joseph Kanon or Alan Furst, Rabb magically fuses a smart, energetic narrative with layers of fascinating, vividly documented history. The result is a stunning historical thriller, created by a writer to celebrate—and contend with.

Editorial Reviews

From Publishers Weekly

Starred Review. Set in 1927 Germany, Rabb's superb sequel to Rosa correlates the advent of talking movies with the rise of Nazism. When Kriminal-Oberkommisar Nikolai Hoffner investigates the apparent suicide of an Ufa film studio executive, the trail leads the Berlin policeman to the sex and drug trade as well as to the National Socialist German Workers Party's local leader, Joseph Goebbels. Working with Helen Coyle, an attractive American talent agent for MGM, Hoffner learns how cutthroat the picture business is. Rumors of films with sound threaten to change the industry. Without sound, all you have is shadow and light, an inventor tells Hoffner. With sound, movies can do a lot more than entertain, as soon to be shown by Nazi propaganda films and newsreels. Rabb's meticulous research brings to life a corrupt society vulnerable to extremism. Well-conceived cameos by director Fritz Lang and actor Peter Lorre add to the intrigue. Author tour. (Apr.)
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From Booklist

*Starred Review* Nazi noir is hot, what with Philip Kerr’s A Quiet Flame, Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke, and Rabb’s second Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner novel all appearing between March and May. Technically, these three novels should be called Weimar noir, as they all focus either entirely or partially on the years between the wars, when the Weimar Republic was hanging by a thread and Hitler’s brownshirts were gathering steam. In 1927, Hoffner is called to the movie studio Ufa to rubber-stamp the suicide of an executive. Except that it’s clearly murder, and Hoffner can’t help poking around. What he finds is a plot of Chandlerian complexity. It starts with a new invention to synchronize sound and action on film, but that’s really a McGuffin of sorts, leading Hoffner to the brownshirts and a plan to rearm Germany. Rabb keeps both balls in the air effectively, introducing a host of real-life figures (Josef Goebbels and legendary director Fritz Lang among them) and dallying with subplots involving Hoffner’s sons (one a brownshirt) and the inspector’s romance with an MGM talent scout, also in search of the sound device. There’s plenty of Weimar decadence on view here, but it’s the fascinating slice of film history overlaid with a sense of the gathering storm that gives the novel its punch. That and Hoffner himself, a noir hero in every way, from his unquenchable thirst for potables to the inevitability with which he finds himself caught in the riptide of history. --Bill Ott

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 384 pages
• Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux; First Edition edition (March 31, 2009)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0374261946
• ISBN-13: 978-0374261948
• Product Dimensions: 9.2 x 6.2 x 1.3 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (53 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #817,532 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

29 of 29 people found the following review helpful:

3.0 out of 5 stars Caught on Film, January 2, 2009

By 

Roger Brunyate "reader/writer/musician" (Baltimore, MD) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shadow and Light: A Novel (Hardcover)

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As he had done in ROSA (the only other novel of his that I have read), Jonathan Rabb paints a wonderfully dark picture of Berlin in the twenties: drugs and alcohol amid the detritus of war, sexual excesses in the cabarets, and a gangster culture semi-tolerated. Ordinary working people, resentful and forgotten, are easily stirred by the rival forces of communism and the nascent Nazi party. Chief Inspector Nikolai Hoffner, Rabb's antihero, threads a twisting path through this maze, which sometimes seems like a visit to the underworld.

Rabb's feeling for noir is appropriate here, since this novel centers around the German film industry, whose leading director, Fritz Lang, known as "the master of darkness", had just completed his monumental METROPOLIS. Lang is only one of some dozen real figures who appear in the novel, and not just in cameo roles either. Because Rabb is not writing a whodunnit -- even though the book begins with Hoffner being called to investigate a mysterious death at the Berlin film studios, UFA -- he can plunge even his real figures quite deep into the mud, knowing that little of it will ultimately stick. This is both the fascination of the book and its ultimate disappointment, because although people are more or less sorted into their respective camps by the end, very little light shines through the darkness -- the implication being that the shadows will continue to deepen right through the next decade.

This is not always an easy book to read. The early pages involve more of Hoffner's back story than first-time readers may find approachable. It can be difficult to pick up cross-references even within the book itself; Rabb's style is episodic rather than linear. Then there are an unusual number of plot strands: pornographic movies, the introduction of the talkies, struggles between UFA and MGM, postwar rearmament, and the early activities of the Nazis. Even at the end, it is not clear how these all fit together. But Hoffner is an interesting character, and his involvement with Leni Coyle -- an American talent agent who may well have other motives for being in Berlin -- keeps both him and the reader on their toes. For me, though, the sequences that gave the book the most humanity were those involving Hoffner's two sons, especially the way the investigation brings him closer to the younger one, an absent father trying to make up for lost time.

17 of 19 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars A great historical thriller, January 16, 2009

By 

Jeffrey Phillips "Innovation and Team Product... (Raleigh, NC) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shadow and Light: A Novel (Hardcover)

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Shadow and Light is an exceptionally interesting book, written about the period of time of the Weimar Republic and the ensuing rise of the Nazi party. Nominally it concerns the apparent suicide of a move studio executive and the investigation by a chief inspector, but it unfolds as so much more.

The investigation leads the inspector in a number of different paths, including the development of sound in the film industry, the rise of Goebbels and others in the Nazi party and the re-arming of the German Army. The investigation is fast paced and involves a beautiful femme fatale. One is never quite sure which side (of several) she is working for. The inspector plays a bit too close to type - too tired, too world weary, too all-knowing, and yet too often unable to bring all the pieces together.

In many ways this book reminds me of some of Alan Furst's writings, which are all prologues to the Second World War. The author weaves together a number of interesting story lines, especially about the competition between the US and German film industries, and the rise of the Nazis and their propaganda machine. I would have enjoyed a bit more about the period, as the Weimar Republic is a fascinating time in history, stuck between two wars as Germany struggles with governance and recovery.

The book is written in a style that reveals little, and it forces the reader to pay attention. The plotting unfolds slowly, and the number of intertwined story lines can be a bit murky at times, but this is an excellent read.

9 of 9 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Berlin noir, January 15, 2009

By 

Tim Beazley - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Shadow and Light: A Novel (Hardcover)

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"Shadow and Light" describes Berlin police inspector Nikolai Hoffner's investigation into the apparent murder of Herr Thyssen, a film studio executive, in 1927.

Berlin in 1927, shortly before the Nazis came to power, is a dark, decadent, dangerous city; and every twist and turn of the plot exposes more and more of the moral decay and political corruption of the time. Thyssen's murder -- if it was a murder -- may be related to his work at the movie studio. Movie studios around the world are trying to develop a technology to make "talkies." The potential financial rewards are enormous, so the competition is fierce, and some of the methods used to test the new technology -- sex films -- are not for the squeamish.

The sex industry connection implies the possible involvement of organized crime. Did Thyssen do something to cross a crime boss?

The financing behind the new technology is also problematic. There are big bucks involved, so who exactly is financing the studios, and what connection do they have to the increasingly popular, National Socialist political movement? And why would either big bucks financiers or the Nazi Party be involved with sex films?

In addition to those thorny problems, Hoffner also has some personal issues to deal with. One of his sons is connected to the movie studio where Thyssen worked, and his other son is pro-Nazi, a bit of a problem, since Hoffner's own mother is Jewish.

The plot in "Shadow and Light" is complex, all of the characters seem to have multiple motivations, and the atmosphere is gritty and bleak. A very good, noir read.