The Girl from Berlin

What a great and beautiful story! I was captivated by it and hated to put the book down. There's sleuthing, a murder mystery, historical fiction, courtroom drama, love, sacrifice, struggle, hatred, and redemption. It hit all of my favorite buttons.

The story opens in July, 2017, with a sleazy Italian lawyer working for a German company trying to force an old woman off her land and claiming that the company he works for is the rightful owner of said property. She's furious and calls on her only living relative, a nephew and restaurateur in Chicago, for help. He then bribes his dear friends who happen to be a happily married couple - detective Liam Taggart and phenom lawyer, Catherine Lockhart - with a Tuscan vacation at a villa near show more Siena - all expenses paid - in exchange for looking into Aunt Gabi's dire situation.

At first blush, Aunt Gabi doesn't appear to have a leg to stand on and may soon have to relinquish the property on which she has lived for nearly eight decades. Thrilled for receiving the added assistance, Aunt Gabi sends a copy of a Berliner Jewish woman's memoir to help Catherine get a better handle on Aunt Gabi's frustration and belief in her absolute right of ownership. Even the local judge sided with the corporation, given the evidence on hand and Gabi's attorney's lack of showing up in court. Liam and Catherine are not easily intimidated or dissuaded from digging deeper into the matter. They find a young bright female lawyer who is eager to serve and deliver justice in her part of the world.

It is the WWII memoir of violinist Ada Baumgarten which truly pushes all of the emotion hot buttons. While preparing a performance of Mahler's 3rd Symphony, I was reading a particularly difficult and heart wrenching passage while listening to the tremendously moving 6th movement of the symphony. Tears streamed down my cheeks and I could barely read the words through the wet curtain of sorrow. (Emotional music will do that to me every time. Just take away the music track of a movie and suddenly the whole story falls flat.) Yet in spite of all the difficulties Ada encounters and the challenges she and her family endure, she somehow still finds hope.

Author Ronald H. Balson spins a spectacular yarn in this 5th installment of the Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart series. As a lawyer himself, he knows the jargon and the legal details needed for such a story. But beyond that, he is a masterful storyteller and a tremendous writer. I was transported back in time and silently walked alongside the characters as they strolled down Berlin's, Bologna's and Rome's streets. The visuals were spectacularly described and the tension, palpable.

If you enjoy a good mystery, solidly researched historical fiction and great courtroom drama, then I highly recommend this book to you. show less

This is the 2nd book read from this author. Audio- After loving "Once We Were Brothers" I noticed that he had 2 more books with the same characters - Liam Taggart the Private Investigator & Catherine Lockhart the Chicago Attorney who helped Ben Solomon a holocaust survivor and I was thrilled to read another book with the same characters and continue the duo's journey of helping survivors in today's day. The back stories are so informative of that time period. This story is about a request from Liam & Catherine's friend to help his Aunt in Tuscany(Italy) who is being evicted from her estate where she has lived since 1949. The eviction notice from a lawsuit stating that she does not own the property and has no legal rights to it. The show more story unfolds with a memoire manuscript that Aunt Gabby has had in her bedside table for years - translated from German to English for her American Lawyer we learn about Ada Baumgarten a daughter of a prestigious violinist with the Berlin Philharmonic and her family connection to the Tuscan Hills Estate and through that story the fight to save Aunt Gabbies Estate begins. Historically Detailed and engaging to the very end. Loved it! Moving on to his next release "Saving Sophie"! show less

In The Girl from Berlin, Balson introduces the modern story of PI Liam's and lawyer Catherine's response to plea for help from the owner of their favorite Italian restaurant. Tony's beloved Aunt Gabi is being threatened with eviction from her picturesque villa in Tuscany by the crooked, moneygrubbing VinCo. It looks like hope is all but lost for Gabi whose deed to the land has been declared invalid, even after having two separate lawyers contest the case. Without the help of our would-be heroes, Gabi will be forced to vacate the land, leaving her precious award-winning vineyard in the hands of shady VinCo.

In an effort to support her case for ownership of the land, Gabi presents Catherine and Liam the memoir of the mysterious Ada show more Baumgarten. Ada, the daughter of famed Berlin Philharmonic concert master Jacob Baumgarten, is an unusually talented violinist growing up in Berlin, performing with the philharmonic's junior orchestra. Unfortunately, Ada's family is Jewish, and the unimaginable is unfolding in Berlin as the Nazis rise to power. Even as her prodigious talents attract the attention of even the Nazi elites, Berlin grows more dangerous by the day. Ultimately, to save her life and while allowing her to pursue her career, Maestro Wilhelm Furtwangler arranges a dream opportunity for Ada to play with the Bologna State Opera orchestra, an orchestra that traditionally allows no women. Ada's talent opens the way for her to perform all over Italy, but the specter of the Nazis grows ever closer until inevitable tragedy strikes.

Ada's story is fascinating, giving readers a glimpse of living and working in wartime Italy and Germany. I found the descriptions of the music, and Ada's ascent to fame as a female violinist at a time when most orchestras didn't allow female musicians to be particularly compelling. That said, the more historical portions of Ada's memoir suffer from a serious info dumping problem where the narration seems less like the memoir of a young woman and more like a direct copy of a modern encyclopedia. The mystery plays a clear second fiddle to Ada's story, as Liam, Catherine and friends ploddingly "hurry" to connect the dots and save Gabi's land in between eating Italian food, getting into fisticuffs with VinCo's slimy attorney, and "Oh, right, we were looking for the deed to Gabi's land, weren't we?"

While the interweaving of the two plots could probably have been handled a bit more artfully, Balson does deliver an interesting and satisfying historical mystery with a more complicated resolution than I was expecting. Despite the encyclopedia moments, Balson does a lot of things right in Ada's historical story, including drawing a realistic depiction of that era's musical scene and even portraying the character of Wilhelm Furtwangler, a true historical figure who staunchly refused to let the Nazis' hateful race policies compromise the artistic integrity of his orchestra, using his talent and what power he could to stand up for Jewish musicians in Germany's darkest days. show less

Wow, I am at a loss for words. This is the first book I've read by Ronald H. Balson and it was wonderful. It started off rather slow but built into a heart wrenching yet also heart warming story of love and loss, bigotry and hate and at last survival. Catherine, a successful lawyer is asked by a friend to help his aunt Gabrielle, in Tuscany. A large company has claimed that she is not the rightful deed owner of her Tuscan Villa and Vineyard and has been given a 60-day eviction notice. Liam and Catherine go to Italy to assist. While trying to figure out the legal difficulties of property ownership, they discover the history of how Gabrielle came into possession of the Villa. They discover the incredible life story of her mother, Ada, and show more her family and how they were persecuted by the Nazi's in WWII. This is a cautionary tale that is very pertinent in the current political situation in the United States and reminded me of how quickly bad leadership can sink a country. It is seldom that a story is so touching and beautiful that it makes me cry but this one did. It is the fifth book in the Liam Taggart & Catherine Lockhart series and even though I hadn't read the previous books, this worked well as a stand alone. I loved this story and will definitely be reading more from this author. I received an ARC from NetGalley and St. Martin's Press in exchange for a fair and honest review. All opinions expressed are my own. show less

This book is the fifth in the Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart legal procedural series. I did not read any of the previous books, but didn’t feel like I was out of the loop in any way. This one is also a historical fiction novel; it goes back and forth between 2017 in Pienza, Italy and the 1930s - primarily in Berlin and Bologna.

In the present day, Tony Vincenzo in Chicago asks Liam and Catherine to travel to Tuscany to help his Aunt Gabi in Pienza who was being threatened with eviction. (Catherine is an attorney, and her husband Liam is a private investigator.)

A Tuscan attorney had informed Gabi, who is 78, that she had sixty days to vacate; he claimed the land was owned by VinCo, a billion-dollar corporation. Gabi went through show more two previous lawyers, who both only wanted Gabi to take the money offered by VinCo and go live somewhere else. But she had no intention of leaving if she could help it.

Liam and Catherine tried to get information from Gabi about how she got the land and why VinCo thought she was not entitled to it. She asked them to read a memoir by Ada Baumgarten that would provide all the answers.

Ada’s story is told in chapters alternating with the account of Liam and Catherine’s attempts to obtain documentation for Gabi in the present. (You would think, given that Gabi said they would find out what they needed to know by reading the manuscript, they would do more than peruse a couple of chapters a day.)

Ada was born in Berlin on November 11, 1918 and became a concert violinist as a young girl. Her career was interrupted and ultimately ended, however, by the rise of the Nazi movement in Germany. Because Ada was Jewish, she was not only prevented from playing as the Nazis enacted more and more restrictions on Jews, but eventually targeted for elimination, and sent to the Auschwitz killing camp.

In the meantime, Liam and Catherine eventually get both an Italian lawyer to help them and a lawyer in Germany, who can help with corporate records for VinCo.

Time is running out though, and the pressure is intense to come up with evidence of Gabi’s ownership in spite of obfuscation and delay from all corners.

Discussion: I felt the author was acting on a desire to express various passions with this book: a love of Tuscany (and indeed, who can blame him?) and a desire to educate readers on what happened during the rise of fascism in Germany and Italy. Moreover, the author from time to time inserted subtle parallels between fascism and Trumpism, giving it the feel of a “cautionary tale.”

All of this was instructive even if not integrated so smoothly into the narration. The story in the book-within-the-book - Ada’s memoir - was good but the understanding Ada had of the situation seemed a little too prescient for a young girl living through events in the 1930s. She claimed much of what she knew came from her friend Natalia, who had contacts as an underground partisan, but Natalia too had more of a 21st century knowledge of, and insight into, what the Nazis were doing than was believable.

Similarly, some of the dialogue in the 1930s employed 2017 usage that was unlikely to have obtained in the 1930s. (As just one example, Natalia talks of seeing Mussolini “suck up to Hitler.”)

Finally, as mentioned above, the fact that the investigators took so long to read a manuscript that was supposed to be crucial to their investigation beggars belief.

Evaluation: In spite of some quibbles I had, this was a good story, and kept my attention throughout. The legal complications, which can’t be revealed lest they spoil the story, were very interesting, as was Ada’s story. show less

The Girl from Berlin by Ronald H. Balson is an engaging novel that weaves seamlessly back and forth in time. The events playing out in the present are directly linked to a young woman's experiences during World War II and both story arcs are fascinating. Although this latest release is the fifth installment in the Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart series, it can be read as a standalone.

Gabriella "Gabi" Vincenzo has lived more than seventy years on her family's vineyard in the Italian countryside. When a lawyer representing VinCo, the corporation which owns the land around her, hands her an eviction notice, Gabi's nephew, Tony, who lives in the United States, asks his good friend, private investigator Liam Taggert for help. Liam, along show more with his attorney wife, Catherine Lockhart, agree to look into the case, but they are uncertain whether they can stop the eviction. Catherine immediately begins reading the engrossing manuscript Gabi sent to them. However, she is unsure what clues she will find in this heartwrenching memoir written by Ada Baumgarten, a Jewish violinist who lived in Nazi Germany before and during World War II.

Ada's story details her life in Berlin both before and after Hitler's rise to power. Her father is a concertmaster and violinist with the Berlin Philharmonic and he is delighted with his daughter's impressive talent. Ada is a gifted violinist whose friendship with fellow violinist Kurt Koenig comes to a poignant end when his father forces him to join Hitler Youth. However, their lives remain intertwined despite the fact Ada is Jewish and Kurt is conscripted into military service. For much of the time before and during World War II, the Baumgarten family is protected by an acquaintance with powerful connections. When Hitler begins sending Jews to concentration camps, Ada and her mother go to Italy, but their future remains tenuous due to Mussolini's alliance with Hitler.

Catherine and Liam must figure out how Ada's history ties into Gabi's predicament with VinCo. Their efforts to find answers are stymied by the powerful corporation, lost records and a dishonest lawyer. Aiding them in their quest is Italian lawyer Giulia Romano. Their discoveries take them back to Germany where a German lawyer assists them in uncovering the horrifying truth about Gabi's parcel of land and the company trying to wrest it from her.

The Girl from Berlin is an utterly captivating novel that is rife with historical details. Ada is a vibrantly developed character and her experiences in Nazi Germany are heartrending. Some of her family's decisions are inexplicable as Hitler's policies regarding Jews grow more threatening over time. Liam and Catherine's investigation in the present is quite compelling and the information they uncover is rather chilling. This newest addition to Ronald H. Balson's Liam Taggart and Catherine Lockhart series is another well-researched novel that is as informative as it is interesting. I truly enjoyed this outstanding novel and I highly recommend it to readers of the genre. show less

This book is so amazing! I loved it. The story is great but it was a very interactive book for me. Whenever Ada mentioned a musical piece that she was learning I got on Youtube and listened to the music! In the beginning I was stopping to listen to music often but it really made the book come alive for me! I took music lessons as a child and had a lot of exposure to classical music in my childhood. This book really helped me rediscover my love for classical music! I was also impressed with the amount of research that must have went into the writing of this story. Life in prewar Germany was vividly described. Parents wrestling with decisions like " Do I take my family and leave the only country they have ever known or do I risk staying?" show more I can imagine the weight of those decisions. The wrong choice could cost everything. I highly recommend this book it is a really great read! show less