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Title details for Shadow and Light by Jonathan Rabb - Wait list

Shadow and Light

A Novel

by Jonathan Rabb
Simon Prebble
Audiobook
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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.

  • Creators

  • Publisher

  • Release date

    May 28, 2009

  • Formats

    • OverDrive Listen audiobook

      • ISBN: 9781400192175
      • File size: 343349 KB
      • Duration: 11:55:18

  • Languages

    • English

  • Reviews

    • AudioFile Magazine
      There's a persistent mournfulness in Simon Prebble's reading. Whether it's directed toward a doomed Berlin of the 1920s or to the wreckage of the life of Rabb's protagonist, Nikolai Hoffner, the half-German, half-Russian-Jew detective, hardly matters. The dolefulness is richly appropriate in either case, for Berlin is sliding inexorably toward the abyss of Nazism, and Hoffner finds himself increasingly isolated from any meaningful human connection and from an ethical code that makes sense amid the rising corruption. He is investigating the death of a film studio accountant, a case that will eventually touch on plans to secretly rearm Germany and strengthen the Brown Shirts. The plot may become convoluted, but what stays true, thanks to Prebble, is the sense of despair you feel for Berlin and for Rabb's hero. M.O. (c) AudioFile 2009, Portland, Maine
    • Publisher's Weekly

      Starred review from February 16, 2009
      Set in 1927 Germany, Rabb’s superb sequel to Rosa
      correlates the advent of talking movies with the rise of Nazism. When Kriminal-Oberkommisar Nikolai Hoffner investigates the apparent suicide of an Ufa film studio executive, the trail leads the Berlin policeman to the sex and drug trade as well as to the National Socialist German Workers Party’s local leader, Joseph Goebbels. Working with Helen Coyle, an attractive American talent agent for MGM, Hoffner learns how cutthroat the picture business is. Rumors of films with sound threaten to change the industry. “Without sound, all you have is shadow and light,” an inventor tells Hoffner. With sound, movies can do a lot more than entertain, as soon to be shown by Nazi propaganda films and newsreels. Rabb’s meticulous research brings to life a corrupt society vulnerable to extremism. Well-conceived cameos by director Fritz Lang and actor Peter Lorre add to the intrigue. Author tour.

Formats

  • OverDrive Listen audiobook

subjects

Languages

  • English

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