Written by David Young — Stasi Winter is the fifth novel in the Stasi series featuring Karin Müller of the People’s Police in East Germany. It is 1978 and the country is enduring a notoriously cold winter. Müller is the single mother of young twins, sharing their care with her grandmother. She is hoping to extricate herself from the police and take up a position as a teacher but her superiors have other ideas. They use her state-provided accommodation, the home of her family, as the bait to keep her in post.
When a woman is found dead from hypothermia in a small coastal town, Müller and her colleagues from Berlin are sent to investigate. It might have been an accident, but their involvement suggests someone influential has an interest in the case, and that the truth is less than straightforward.
The investigation also follows the point-of-view of another character, Irma, the Stasi Child of the first book in the series. She is now a young woman, living an apparently quiet life with her grandmother. She becomes involved with Dieter, one of a group of young men who are posted to the area, working in a construction brigade because they have refused to fight in the army. Together they make plans. When Irma and Müller’s paths cross again, more of her story emerges. Their complicated shared history means there is both hostility and a recognition that the two women are, in different ways, equally entangled in the regime.
It becomes clear who is responsible for the murder and why quite early in the novel, and the story takes a turn towards action and adventure rather police procedural as Müller and her team are involved in a dangerous cat-and-mouse with those responsible in the frighteningly icy conditions.
When a woman is found dead from hypothermia in a small coastal town, Müller and her colleagues from Berlin are sent to investigate. It might have been an accident, but their involvement suggests someone influential has an interest in the case, and that the truth is less than straightforward.
The investigation also follows the point-of-view of another character, Irma, the Stasi Child of the first book in the series. She is now a young woman, living an apparently quiet life with her grandmother. She becomes involved with Dieter, one of a group of young men who are posted to the area, working in a construction brigade because they have refused to fight in the army. Together they make plans. When Irma and Müller’s paths cross again, more of her story emerges. Their complicated shared history means there is both hostility and a recognition that the two women are, in different ways, equally entangled in the regime.
It becomes clear who is responsible for the murder and why quite early in the novel, and the story takes a turn towards action and adventure rather police procedural as Müller and her team are involved in a dangerous cat-and-mouse with those responsible in the frighteningly icy conditions.