It is difficult to resist acclamation of the writing of someone as talented and acknowledged as David Young.
Stasi Child, his seminal work on the Stasi themed collection of East German intrigue was described by reviewers at the time as reflecting the nastier aspects of East Germany in the 40 plus years following the war.
Documents released after Germany was reunited, show the Stasi "a surprisingly pervasive organisation, controlling huge numbers of informers, permeating society at all levels, and willing and able to kidnap, imprison and torture on the flimsiest of evidence."
Now in Stais Winter, the fifth book in the Statsi "genre", we are exposed to a German winter in all its brutal freezing force.
Against this white wall of bleakness we have former Oberleutnant but now Major Karin Muller recalled to service in the murder squad after her earlier tragedies and tasked to investigate the murder of a woman which is officially labelled an 'accidental death'.
The author again gives a realistic assement of life in then small socialist republic -- austere and autocratic; sinister and overtly cruel depending on the whims and dictats of secretive police apparachics.
He captures the ambience of state control and oppresion in his twinned, parallel story lines that diverge and then join and segue into a compelling thriller.
The obtuse way the characters refer to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-fascist Protection Barrier also alludes to the mind control and absolute autarchic nature of the communist society in which the storyline is placed.
One jarring aspect was use of atypical English idiom in ostensibly Mother tongue German:
Mrs Goody Two Shoes;
making a good fist of it.
These are wrong concepts to come from ostensibly East Germans speaking their own language; albeit it in the wrtiter's choice of the English descriptive style.
Stasi Child, his seminal work on the Stasi themed collection of East German intrigue was described by reviewers at the time as reflecting the nastier aspects of East Germany in the 40 plus years following the war.
Documents released after Germany was reunited, show the Stasi "a surprisingly pervasive organisation, controlling huge numbers of informers, permeating society at all levels, and willing and able to kidnap, imprison and torture on the flimsiest of evidence."
Now in Stais Winter, the fifth book in the Statsi "genre", we are exposed to a German winter in all its brutal freezing force.
Against this white wall of bleakness we have former Oberleutnant but now Major Karin Muller recalled to service in the murder squad after her earlier tragedies and tasked to investigate the murder of a woman which is officially labelled an 'accidental death'.
The author again gives a realistic assement of life in then small socialist republic -- austere and autocratic; sinister and overtly cruel depending on the whims and dictats of secretive police apparachics.
He captures the ambience of state control and oppresion in his twinned, parallel story lines that diverge and then join and segue into a compelling thriller.
The obtuse way the characters refer to the Berlin Wall as the Anti-fascist Protection Barrier also alludes to the mind control and absolute autarchic nature of the communist society in which the storyline is placed.
One jarring aspect was use of atypical English idiom in ostensibly Mother tongue German:
Mrs Goody Two Shoes;
making a good fist of it.
These are wrong concepts to come from ostensibly East Germans speaking their own language; albeit it in the wrtiter's choice of the English descriptive style.