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    The Beginning
    The Beginning
    The Beginning
    Audiobook13 hours

    The Beginning

    Written by Jonas Winner

    Narrated by Mikael Naramore

    2.5/5

    ()

    About this audiobook

    Long after the Iron Curtain has crumbled, an invisible wall remains between the good citizens of Berlin and those who dwell in the city’s dark underbelly. And one family—the Bentheims—straddles the line between good and evil.

    The family has graciously taken in Till Anschütz, a young orphan on the run, and he quickly befriends his new brother, twelve-year-old Max. Together, the boys explore the office where their cold, distant father, Xavier Bentheim, writes his novels. They discover a secret door, an underground lair, gruesome photographs, bizarre films, and horrifying scenes. Is this shadowy world the reason Xavier’s behavior has taken a turn for the vicious—and will they ever be able to escape what they’ve seen?

    Berlin Police Inspector Konstantin Butz discovers the mutilated corpse of a woman; beside her lies a power drill freshly wrenched from her stomach. This latest in a series of related murders launches Butz on an obsessive search for the killer, but the key could lie hidden with his own girlfriend…Claire Bentheim.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherBrilliance Audio
    TranslatorEdwin Miles
    Release dateAug 27, 2013
    ISBN9781480531666
    The Beginning
    Author

    Jonas Winner

    Born in Berlin in 1966, Jonas Winner lived in Rome and the United States before moving back to his home city to study philosophy. As a reporter and television editor, he shot documentaries and covered cultural affairs. His experience informed his work on screenplays, and several of his detective stories and thrillers have aired throughout Europe. He released his debut novel in 2011, followed by the seven-part Berlin Gothic series, which became one of Germany’s first e-book bestsellers. Winner lives and writes in Berlin.

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    Reviews for The Beginning

    2.5/5

    6 ratings3 reviews

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    • 4/5
      The first in the Berlin Gothic series is a very auspicious beginning indeed; it actually merits the definite article. ;)

      I couldn't put it down. This is real horror, not just a thriller, and I found Jonas Winner's plot to be completely original.

      What I found really striking was the sense of immediacy conveyed by Winner's prose. I felt like I was right in the action -- I guess that's normally true with books for fairly imaginative readers. If I had to pinpoint the difference I'd say I didn't find myself looking into my memory to fit what was happening into what already had transpired, and I was too absorbed to hazard guesses about what was to come next.

      Again, horror fans, I cannot recommend this book highly enough.

      One negative note: Can Berlin please get a break? Winner shamelessly excoriates the city as more or less the worst place ever on the first page. It's not like the place is underrated for its connections to the darker side of human nature...it would be nice to set the horror someplace more counterintuitive. I felt too drawn into some German guilt performance, but then again, what do I, the American reader, know about that?

      BTW, I got my copy of this delight through Goodreads Giveaways.
    • 1/5
      Read The Cove, the first of two novels here. She is MUCH too wordy. Very unrealistic dialog.
    • 1/5
      Yuck. Catherine Coulter's The Beginning is a two-in-one omnibus, including The Cove and The Maze. My mom lent this book to me after she discovered I liked to read thrillers. It seems as if my aunt has introduced mysteries to my mom (who had really only read romances up til now), and mom had read this recently. I typically read mysteries as escape literature, but I expect them to be fairly well-written and have an intricate plot that I can get lost in for a few hours.The Cove, the only one of of the books from The Beginning that I will read, was not well-written, nor did it have an intricate plot. It was a silly story about Sally Brainerd, who escapes a sanitarium, is somehow involved or sees her abusive father killed (her memory is a bit hazy from all the drugs they gave her in the sanitarium), then escapes to her aunt Amabel in a mysterious west cost town, The Cove. FBI agent James Quinlan follows Sally to The Cove, posing as a private investigator looking into the mysterious disappearance of a couple who visited the town a few years before. By the end of the book, we learn what happened to Sally's father and what happened to the missing couple. Both resolutions are quite far-fetched, especially the one involving The Cove and it's older residents.Coulter is not a particularly good writer. The dialog (which makes up most of the book) is stilted, repetitive and not life-like at all. The plots could have been interesting, but in Coulter's hands seemed almost farce-like rather than mysterious in any way. And she continued to use the same words to describe the same characters throughout the book. Sally's husband, Scott, is always a "worm." Dr. Beadermeyer is a "monster." And at least two, and maybe three, different characters use the word "damnation." Who the heck uses that word anymore, let alone multiple characters in the same book? All I know is - no more Catherine Coulter for me.