March Violets

It's one of the stories in Berlin Noir, a three-in-one book by Philip Kerr, a murder mystery set in the mid-1930's Germany, just when Hitler is coming to power. At first I thought it was contemporary with the setting, but it is actually a recent book. It's a little disconcerting. Goring, Goebbels and Himmler all show up in these stories. Bernard Gunther, our protagonist, is a private eye specializing in missing persons, and his business has been thriving since the Nazis came to power. Seems the Nazis keep very good records of who they disappear, but they don't communicate that information to anyone. So when someone disappears, they come to Bernard to find out what happened to them. It's usually a Jew, and it's usually not good.

But occasionally things get a little more involved, and those are the stories in the book.

I read the first one right through and it was great. I started the second one, but then work dried up and I lost interest. Odd how that worked out. At first I thought it was the stories were too grim, but looking back, I don't think that's the case.