The Sleepwalkers

This book has an identity crisis. It is at times a mystery, a thriller, and.a work of historical fiction. As a mystery it's ok, as a thriller it's good, as historical fiction, it's best. The plot is backed by the fall of the Wermacht, and the inevitable rise of the Nazis. Perhaps the mystery and thriller components suffer because the historical context helps give away the ending.

Parts of the book seem poorly written, as if Grossman is mailing it in. On more than one occasion, the plot advances on some piece of luck, some forgotten secret. A little more creativity would have improved the books credibility.

Overall the historical context wins out, leading to a solid ending and an eerie, engrossing epilogue.

Received a copy through LibraryThing Early Reviewers. Sadly, I just couldn't get into it; I found the characters too pat and broadly sketched, and gave up part-way through. Left me wishing for much more subtlety, an underappreciated virtue for mysteries and books touching on Third Reich Germany. ( )

I did not dislike the book overall, but it had nothing new to add to genre. Written well, the characters were a bit too much boilerplate, and the historical "truths" rather circumspect. I would of borrow it from the library, but not a purchase for my permanent library. I would go with a book by Kerr versus this book, and I am not sure I would seek out other books written by this author. ( )

An awful attempt to be the next Philip Kerr. There are many common traits between The Sleepwalkers and the Bernie Gunther's series: the setting (Berlin in the final year of Weimar Republic) and the protagonists background: both are WW I heroes and famous police investigators. While Kerr is adept at transmit Bernie's thoughts and feelings, Grossmann instead can't do that, even if hammers in the dangerous atmosphere of that time.
*Spoiler Alert*
There is another, big and worse difference between Grossmann and Kerr: the wrongness of the historical setting in The Sleepwalkers. In a historical novel, the name calling isn't sufficient to depict an era, the details and above all the historical facts are to be precise. In The Sleepwalkers there are a lot of famous peoples, but there is also a big, factual error. The plot revolves around the human experiments in Oranienburg that never happened in 1932, when there was still a (sort of) democratic state and the SS were in the beginning of their development. Only in 1933 Oranienburg will become one of the first (wild) concentration camp ruled by SA and the human experiments will start only after 1939. ( )

This book was more interesting than I thought it would be. The war was just the backdrop, and wasn't taking over the main story, which often happens in novels set in war eras. The murder mystery itself was pretty good, a bit gruesome, but I like that. All in all, it's a good thriller to read on your off time. ( )