A book about the Stasi in cold war E Germany, adds a well researched modern narrative to an interesting period. Boring history? Not on your Nelly.
The characters are good, I liked the diversity of the female chief detective, Muller came across as strong overall but with some weakness from the stress/trauma of a hard previous case. There are a few grown up Hitler Jugend characters too, brilliant mix, unique. One thing i would like to see more of is the insides of Mullers mind, more in the way of feelings and emotional processes.
This is part of a series which sadly was a weakness in this extract, I needed to have read the previous book to get the ground work in on the characters, left me feeling a little lost in parts, a more detailed refresher would have helped significantly.
The reason why I would advise anybody to read this is the excellent research, both on cold war commy weaponry and most of all....
The weather in the book was great, the snow storm of December 29th 1978 was surprisingly accurate for an ex reporter. After looking at met office synoptic analysis charts and EUMetsat images and data i can say that the info is all pretty good. Although the timings were incorrect, the cold front only ran through Rugen by 12 z on 29th December, not the evening of the 28th when the arctic air was way over Scandinavia, it was more continental air anyway, the stationary front was the problem snow wise. The news reader could have mentioned the freezing rain ahead of the snow too. The temperature probably plummeted by 8 degrees rather than the 15, although news reporters do exaggerate. Considering the overall accuracy of this, the author clearly never worked for the Daily Express.
The characters are good, I liked the diversity of the female chief detective, Muller came across as strong overall but with some weakness from the stress/trauma of a hard previous case. There are a few grown up Hitler Jugend characters too, brilliant mix, unique. One thing i would like to see more of is the insides of Mullers mind, more in the way of feelings and emotional processes.
This is part of a series which sadly was a weakness in this extract, I needed to have read the previous book to get the ground work in on the characters, left me feeling a little lost in parts, a more detailed refresher would have helped significantly.
The reason why I would advise anybody to read this is the excellent research, both on cold war commy weaponry and most of all....
The weather in the book was great, the snow storm of December 29th 1978 was surprisingly accurate for an ex reporter. After looking at met office synoptic analysis charts and EUMetsat images and data i can say that the info is all pretty good. Although the timings were incorrect, the cold front only ran through Rugen by 12 z on 29th December, not the evening of the 28th when the arctic air was way over Scandinavia, it was more continental air anyway, the stationary front was the problem snow wise. The news reader could have mentioned the freezing rain ahead of the snow too. The temperature probably plummeted by 8 degrees rather than the 15, although news reporters do exaggerate. Considering the overall accuracy of this, the author clearly never worked for the Daily Express.