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    Shadow and Light: A Novel
    Shadow and Light: A Novel
    Shadow and Light: A Novel
    Audiobook11 hours

    Shadow and Light: A Novel

    Written by Jonathan Rabb

    Narrated by Simon Prebble

    3.5/5

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    About this audiobook

    Berlin, between the two world wars. When an executive at the renowned Ufa film studios is found dead floating in his office bathtub, it falls to Nikolai Hoffner, a chief inspector in the Kriminalpolizei, to investigate. With the help of Fritz Lang (the German director) and Alby Pimm (leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin), Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin's sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler's Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Being swept up in the case are Hoffner's new lover, an American talent agent for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his two sons: Georg, who has dropped out of school to work at Ufa, and Sascha, his angry, older son, who, unknown to his father, has become fully entrenched in the new German Workers Party as the aide to its Berlin leader, Joseph Goebbels.

    Shadow and Light is brilliant and atmospheric, and hard to put down or shake off. Like Joseph Kanon or Alan Furst, Rabb magically fuses a smart, energetic narrative with layers of fascinating, vividly documented history. The result is a stunning historical thriller, created by a writer to celebrate-and contend with.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherTantor Media, Inc
    Release dateMay 28, 2009
    ISBN9781400182176
    Author

    Jonathan Rabb

    Jonathan Rabb is the author of five novels: The Second Son, Shadow and Light, Rosa, The Overseer, and The Book of Q. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife and twin children.

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    Reviews for Shadow and Light

    3.5/5

    46 ratings5 reviews

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    • 4/5
      Berlin: Some Light, Lots of Noir

      Not Bad. 1930's Berlin Noir books usually explore questions of living (and dying) in an increasingly immoral, Nazified world. In Rabb's book, the thugs come from everywhere--the Nazis are just the new kids on the block. His detective has made peace with old school evils and now has to deal with the new guys--the big problem is not that they are bad; the problem is they are too ambitious (thats what the old rich Prussian says).

      The book creeps thru Berlin's UFA film studios as Americans and right-wing Germans fight to take it over. Fritz Lang has finished Metropolis and it's a flop. Sound is on the way with Jolson and German porno competing. This is no Singing in the Rain. More like a wet blanket on any hope for the whole world. But you do find out who murders whom. But, of course, nobody gets punished.
    • 3/5
      Rabb deftly captures the atmosphere of 1920s Berlin, particularly the decadence for which this period is famous. He does have one blooper of a factual error -- one of the characters was to take a transatlantic flight to go from Germany to the USA, something which was not possible in 1926. Other than this, an entertaining read with a terribly flawed protagonist.
    • 3/5
      Good mystery story set in Berlin. Rabb builds his mysteries around historical facts, makes for interesting reading.
    • 4/5
      Excellent Weimar-era Zeitgeist. A police-procedural cum detective-noir with German silent film stars thrown in...
    • 3/5
      The period between the wars in Germany is fascinating, a veritable cultural explosion with Berlin at the epicenter embracing extreme politics, radical artists, experimental theatre, and outrageous cabaret. Nothing was off limits and absolutely everything was for sale.Jonathan Rabb sets his historical mystery at this pivotal moment inside Berlin's silent film industry. Fritz Lang's Metropolis is on every theater's screens but the Americans are quickly taking over the industry and pushing forward new technology that will usher in sound. Will German cinema survive?An Ufa studio executive who's now playing the role of the body in the bathtub is not a good omen and there is a missing girl who might hold the key to the studio's future. Chief inspector Nikolai Hoffner is left to unravel a mystery nobody seems to want solved. This mystery is as convoluted as the actual history of the period. Jonathan Rabb does an excellent job of pulling the reader in and setting them off balance in the decadent world of Berlin's sex clubs and burlesque houses but finding their way out is a bit of a problem. A few too many menacing characters and subplots bog this mystery down but the atmosphere is perfection.