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Shadow and Light: A Novel (Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner), by Jonathan Rabb
PDF Ebook Shadow and Light: A Novel (Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner), by Jonathan Rabb
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Berlin, 1927. When a studio executive at Ufa -- the home of German Cinema -- is found dead in his office bathtub, Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar Nikolai Hoffner is determined to uncover the truth behind what he firmly believes is murder. With the help of Fritz Lang and Alby Pimm, the 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, and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Jonathan Rabb's Shadow and Light is an electrifying thriller set in a darkly beautiful Berlin poised on the edge of destruction.
- Sales Rank: #1698559 in Books
- Published on: 2010-03-30
- Released on: 2010-03-30
- Original language: English
- Number of items: 1
- Dimensions: 8.50" h x .88" w x 5.50" l, .66 pounds
- Binding: Paperback
- 400 pages
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
Review
“A darkly gripping, intellectually sophisticated new mystery.” ―The Boston Globe
“Rabb has a gift for capturing the intoxicating -- and toxic -- atmosphere of post-World War I Berlin. . . . His gallery of real-life characters, scattered across the fictional landscape, lends a touch of Ragtime-like fun.” ―The New York Times Book Review
“An innovative historical detective mystery . . . gives a haunting, dark portrait of Berlin society in the Weimar Republic.” ―The Denver Post
“Rabb's brilliantly plotted narrative leads his detective past dead ends and red herrings to the discovery that much more is at stake. . . . We can expect some spectacular explosions when next we meet his wounded detective in his beloved, battered city.” ―The Washington Post
“An ambitious historical mystery novel that beautifully blends escapist adventure with a surprisingly compelling underpinning of spiritual and moral ambiguity . . . terrific reading.” ―The Boston Globe
“Atmosphere is all in Jonathan Rabb's brooding new mystery . . . brilliantly plotted narrative . . . Rabb writes so well and the mood he creates is so haunting.” ―Wendy Smith, The Washington Post
“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.” ―Publishers Weekly (starred review)
“Weimar Berlin's legendary film industry provides the cinematically dissolute milieu for Jonathan Rabb's stylish noire Shadow and Light, in which Fritz Lang himself makes a cameo.” ―Vogue
“Rabb's second entry in his German trilogy is both a first-rate historical novel and a singularly artful crime noir that will remind readers of Alan Furst (The Spies of Warsaw). That's good company! Enthusiastically recommended.” ―David Keymer, Library Journal
“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, Booklist (starred review)
“Rabb to call on his true strengths as a writer, most notably his atmospheric evocation of time and place. The city itself is an important character in the book, and Weimar Berlin is brilliantly portrayed in all its gritty decadence and postwar opportunism. . . Shadow and Light is an entertaining book that demands a bit more concentration than most books in the genre, but the effort pays off.” ―Robert Weibezahl, Bookpage
“A suspicious suicide at a film studio sets off a chilling chain of events in the second of Rabb's Berlin-between-the-wars trilogy (Rosa, 2005). In 1919, Nikolai Hoffner was a Berlin detective with a bleak worldview. Now it's eight years later, and to describe Hoffner's worldview as bleak would be an unpardonable understatement, like calling Hitler mean-spirited. Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar (Chief Inspector) Hoffner sees both Berlin and himself as beyond redemption--the city because it has sunk into joyless decadence; himself because in the vital roles of husband and father he's been so total and abject a failure. All he shares with his sons, 16-year-old Georgi and 24-year-old Sascha, is the unshakable belief that he was responsible for the death of their mother. Still, he is once and forever a cop, unalterably skilled and efficient, and a cop's got to do what he's hard-wired to do.” ―Kirkus Reviews
“Fritz Lang is more than simply a character in Jonathan Rabb's deliciously sinister new novel: Shadow and Light inhabits the same chiaroscuro world as Doktor Mabuse and M., but imbues it with a subtlety and elegance all its own. Rabb's Berlin is an irresistibly beguiling city, but I wouldn't want to find myself alone there at night. What a delightful novel.” ―John Wray, author of Lowboy
“I loved Shadow and Light. Viciously imaginative, chillingly plausible, Rabb's novel re-awakens Berlin in the 1920s--a city of aged youth and weary sin, where decency is as fragile as celluloid.” ―Jason Goodwin, author of The Bellini Card
Most helpful customer reviews
34 of 35 people found the following review helpful.
Caught on Film
By Roger Brunyate
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.
18 of 20 people found the following review helpful.
A great historical thriller
By Jeffrey Phillips
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.
6 of 6 people found the following review helpful.
Berlin: 1927
By Frank J. Konopka
This book is a sequel, of sorts, to "Rosa" which took place in Berlin in 1919. Now it is 1927 and Nikolai Hoffner, the protagonist of both novels, is still working the seamy side of crime. An apparant suicide at the Ufa studio outside Berlin involves Hoffner once again in a tangled web of lies and conflicting interests. You don't necessarily have to have read the first book to enjoy this one, but it would certainly help to understand the history and motivations of the characters. I found the plot(s) very convoluted and, at times, difficult to follow, which is why I gave this book 4 stars rather than 5. The author certainly has the knack for recreating a time and place that makes the reader feel a part of the situation. Hotels, buildings, stores, restaurants, etc., all have the ring of authenticity. This is a bleak book, as was the first, but that does not make it any the less interesting to read. It would help to have read the first book, but this one can also be taken as a stand alone. It's well worth the read, and I highly recommend it!
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