Garden of Beasts (2004)

I've put this aside for a while as I was finding it rather heavy going and kept comparing it unfavorably to THE DAY OF THE JACKAL. I'll report further if and when I decide to pick it up again. It's a thriller set at the Berlin Olympics of 1936.

Wow. I'm surprised, but I really enjoyed this book. The fine print on the cover says "A novel of Berlin 1936" and that almost made me pass this one by.

The novel does a good job of imparting the paranoia of pre-war Berlin. This isn't anything I would have gone in search of, but it was quite effective.

All this war stuff aside, the mystery/adventure was well done - I couldn't see what was coming, I wasn't tempted to skip ahead over unnecessary or boring passages (surprisingly, I don't recall any). There were a couple of twists and turns that while surprising, weren't shocking - and they enhanced rather than defined the overall story.

Read it. Don't judge a book by it's cover. I'm glad I didn't. ( )

Este libro me sorprendió mucho. Me gustan las novelas históricas y cosas por el estilo, pero este libro fue magnífico porque no sólo cuenta una historia, sino que cuenta muchas, entrelazadas. Los personajes están muy bien logrados, haciéndolos parecer cada vez más reales.
Cuando empecé a leer creí que ya sabía lo que iba a suceder, pero no fue así. Esta novela tiene dos o tres vueltas de tuerca que no esperaba para nada. ( )

Great book! Good story, well told and with memorable characters. Plenty of plot twists and satisfactory ending. Authentic -- demonstrates attention to historical detail. I'd like to see a sequel featuring Detective Inspector Willi Kohl, once he leaves Germany in 1937. ( )

I don't usually read books about the Second World War or Nazi Germany on purpose. However, I like Jeffery Deaver, so I gave this book a try and it was so worth it. Deaver upped his writing in this book. I love Lincoln Rhyme and Amelia Sachs, but this book seemed so much more serious in its complexity than that series. And even though the ending was slightly disappointing, it wasn't the "Matlock" ending that I've grown used to with his other novels.

The whole novel takes place over 2 days. It is 1936, just a few days before the Olympics in Germany. Paul Schumann, a boxer and meticulous German-American NY hitman, is captured and offered a deal - go to Germany and assassinate Reinhard Ernst, the man in charge of Hitler’s rearmament program, or face the death penalty. With a chance at wiping his record clean and earning some money to start over, of course, Paul jumps at the opportunity.

Almost as soon as Paul arrives in Germany, things start to go wrong. He was worried about the team assigned to him not being as detail-oriented as he is and accidentally leaving clues, and they do. And those clues point to Paul.

Kripo (Police) Inspector Willi Kohl, who is not happy about the National Socialists take-over of the country, catches the case of an unidentified murder victim. He and his protege follow the clues and track Paul diligently while working around the new Gestapo rules that strip resources and authority from the Kripo.

Famous figures of the time offer some boundaries and set the scenes for the book - Adolf Hitler, Heinrich Himmler, Goring, Goebbels, and even Jesse Owens have roles. Although Owens has a minor role, he is charismatic and perceptive and even helps Paul evade German police.

Deaver does an excellent job of portraying how regular citizens, police officers and government officials are beaten, frightened, persuaded, taught (and raised in the case of the children) to fall in line with National Socialist Party beliefs. Some people don't recognize what's happening, thinking that it can't get worse or won't last long. Other people don't speak up for others or themselves, fearing that they are one of a very few who disagrees with the Party, not realizing that they are one of many.

Reading about how the children accept what they are taught in school while their parents are afraid to overtly teach them tolerance at home because the children might repeat it and get the whole family sent to a concentration camp, was heart-breaking. I can't imagine living my life afraid to say what I really think and be who I really am, doing the opposite of what I believe, trusting no one for fear of torture or death. How utterly miserable. It would be a living death. ( )