Dark days!

The New Detective (Willie Geismeier #4) by Peter Steiner    

⭐️⭐️⭐️⭐️

Meeting Willie Geismeier as a young man pre WW1 when he has topped his exams, doing everything to be a police constable, is sobering. It goes along way to explain who he is and his actions. He’s like a dog with a bone, he comes at investigations through a unique prism, and seems to solve all his cases

So when he becomes interested in the murder of a journalist he’s given the go ahead to investigate. Willi solves the murder but he thinks there’s more. That more is interrupted by WWI.

Willi comes back a different person to a very different Germany. The Spanish Flu is advancing, the average soldier is worn down. Communism battles with fascism. The place is a whirlwind of double speak and lies. He becomes interested in the avoidance of his enquires by higher authorities about the death of a prisoner Ladislaw Gabek in Stadelheim Prison.

He’s looking for stolen everyday drugs and medical equipment.

His tracks lead to a pathological doctor, Ottmar Von Fischer, whose experiments in disease on prisoners disguise his real passion, the gathering of data to show Jews, criminals, and the disabled are sub-human and need to be exterminated to keep the race pure. 

A shocking look at Germany going into 1939.

The novel’s ending is dark and prophetic. Despite this Willie Geismeier is an appealing character, a man of integrity, whose witnessed much and sees to the roots of some of his society’s problems.

Very much a noir thriller with unpleasant showers of reality.

A Severn House ARC via NetGalley.                                              

Many thanks to the author and publisher.