A murder mystery in pre-WW2 Berlin, as the tide starts turning politically… I followed the plot as best I could, but did struggle a bit with names and aliases. I didn’t feel I’d missed too much by jumping in to the fifth book in the series, but it might be interesting to read earlier books.

I received a free ARC copy of this via NetGalley and the publishers in return for an unbiased review - apologies for the long delay in doing this.

The March Fallen by Volker Kutscher is the fifth book in the Inspector Gereon Rath mystery series. I’ve only read the first novel in this series, but I can say that I much preferred that to this story.

There’s indeed a lot to like here, but it is bogged down by so many distracting things. First, Rath and Charly’s personal life. I find that too much time was devoted to it. It took away from the central mystery, to the point that it ended up not being central at all, especially in the first part of the story. Then Hannah’s tread, which I’m not sure why it was even there. It provided a clean solution for the money, in the end, and it gave Charly an active part in the story, but either it was mixed in awkwardly, or it wasn’t as necessary as the ‘screen time’ suggests.

The mystery in itself was quite interesting, but because the first part of the novel was mainly concerned with Rath and Charly’s private life, the mystery was crammed in the second part. This not only unbalanced the story, but also made for a lot of exposition rather than an unfolding. That’s why I say the mystery was interesting: I learned what it was all about, but I hardly experienced it.
I really liked the idea of the war gold and the ‘heist’, I also really like the idea of the pumped-up war memoir, and I wished they had a lot more space than they actually got. This was the core of the story, for me, but as the story is structured, it ended up being just an accessory.

Although I found a part of the historical setting was lacking, I nonetheless really liked the depiction of the rise of the Nazi at the time of their election to the German parliament. More than the actual facts, I enjoyed how the author looked at how people reacted to the election. It was a very complex situation, where people all expected something different, and were willing to downplaying the risks to see only what they desired.
This was rendered quite skillfully though the characters’ personality and emphasised by Rath’s and Charly’s different political stance. Where Rath isn’t interested in politics at all and tends to dismiss it in favour of more on-the-ground matters, Charly is very politically-aware and sees the rise of the Nazi with worry and even fear. Around them, people react to the Nazi rise in many different ways in between. This gives layer to this part of the story.
The mystery had the potential to be infused into this situation more than it actually was, but still, it was skillfully thought out, if maybe not as well executed.

It did drag in many places, but all in all, it was an enjoyable mystery.

In my usual theme, I'll say this is the fifth book of the Gereon Rath series, but he first I've read (and i have not watched Babylon Berlin, which is based on one or two of the previous books in this series). I'm happy I began with this one. Allow me to explain.

I'm a student of history, and especially WWII, with a side dip into the sociological studies of how good people do and say nothing in the face of great evils. In The March Fallen, it is 1933 Berlin, and the Nazis are consolidating their power. When a homeless WWI veteran is murdered at a train station, Rath is tasked with finding his killer - a job no one else wants to do.

The book starts out slowly, but is worth getting through, as Kutscher draws the atmosphere of an ill wind blowing into Germany while Rath puts his head down ad goes to work. Change is all around him, and despite his somewhat tepid suggestion to Charly, his fiancee, that good people will not go along with the Nazi plans, it's clear that eventually, he will have to face the reality that his job is not just to find murderers, but to toe the Nazi line, and watch what he says and does, lest he make the wrong person angry and wind up in the hands of the SA.

The murdered man is identified by the author of a memoir, who identifies the dead man as being his orderly - and a witness to their (Jewish) Captain's shooting of two children and another German soldier over a disagreement about gold their unit had found in a French villa as they retreated, destroying everything in their wake.

Meanwhile, another storyline focuses on a young girl - the daughter of a injured veteran who drifted into hopelessness and drugs, disillusioned with the country he once served - who set fire to the boardinghouse where they lived, killing her father and others, in her quest to escape the abuse she suffered at the hands of other men there. She's judged unfit to stand trial and sent to a sanitarium, where she once again is abused by a man (a one legged man, keep this in mind as you read). Her escape is very clever, but everyone is trying to find her, so she relies on her wits to survive the streets. This seems to have nothing to do with the main plot of the book. Over time, as Rath's investigation digs more deeply, that will change.

Charly gets her own subplot, as she is sent back to the department where the female detectives investigate graffitti and the like - neither this nor the changes in her country are things that she is happy with. She, at least, recognizes what's happening, but trying to get through to Rath results in them quarreling about it. She decides to unofficially help in the investigation.

There's a case of misidentification, missteps by Rath that lead to at least one death, the smuggling out - in plain view- a prisoner of the SA, the ebb and flow of personnel as rising stars in the Nazi party consolidate the power they have around themselves, constant surprises to Rath of people he thought he knew wholeheartedly joining the Nazis, and a satisfying resolution that both catches the killer and clears the name of the maligned Jewish Captain, in a nice dovetail of all the storylines.

It's worth the read.

Five out of five stars.

Thanks to Sandstone Press and NetGalley for the review copy.

This is the 5th of the Detective Inspector Gideon Rath books ,but the first I've read. although I have seen the first 2 serialised on TV. in Babylon Berlin.
Here a homeless war veteran in found murdered,a trench dagger from WW1 pushed up his nose into the brain. But when the Reichstag catches fire Rath is pulled off the investigation into the murder and put with the Political police interrogating communists.The growing power of the Nazi party is chilling as high ranking jews are dismissed from there posts and evidence becomes secondary to politics.
A former officer then appears on the scene identifies the dead man as his former orderly and says the murderer is a former officer who faked his own death and is now trying to silence his former comrades over the murder of a soldier and two children as well as the theft of gold bullion in the dying days of the war.The imminent publication of war memoirs having brought it all to a head..
The bodies mount up the Nazis become more powerful ,SA brownshirts become auxillery police and their methods are as brutal and sickening as you can imagine.Raths fiance is appalled by what is happening to her country while Rath thinks it will all blow over and the Nazis will soon be gone as the populace gets wise but all the time he sees fear growing nobody speaks people join the party to get on or because they believe in what the Nazis are doing,but you increasingly have to watch what you say and to whom.But as Rath works away at the murders its possible to see how the government consolidate their power while the population is split between those in full support and those who bury their heads in the sand refusing to see whats before their own eyes the fact that our hero is one of those who refuses to believe the situation will last just brings home to you all the more how the Nazis managed to take Germany to tragedy.
Rath eventually solves his case but not in a conventional way as its no longer possible within the political situation and of course we have the benefit of hindsight so know exactly where things are headed..
I really enjoyed this book, chillingly set against he inexorable rise of the most evil regime in history , I felt like I wanted to shake some sense into Gereon Rath much in the way his fiance Charlotte wants to and I look forward to future books in the series as our hero surely faces a rude awakening when it wont be enough to keep your head down and just do your job..

My thanks to the Author publishers and NetGalley for providing me with a Kindle version of this book to read and honestly review.
This is a thoroughly entertaining book engaging from first to last page, atmospheric descriptive with a real sense of time and place. Clever well written and translated, with superb characterisation throughout especially Rath and Charly a quality double act. Though book 5 in the series of can be read as a standalone story. Fiction but features true life events from Berlin in the early thirties, the Reichstag fire, student book burning and Brownshirts on the streets harassing the Jews.
Totally recommended.

I would like to thank Netgalley and Sandstone Press for an advance copy of The March Fallen, the fifth novel to feature Berlin detective Gereon Rath.

1933 Berlin. The Nazis are consolidating their power and life is getting uncomfortable for citizens deemed unsupportive but murder continues. Gereon Rath is drafted in to investigate the murder of a WWI soldier but before he can get going he is transferred to the Political Police to help find the communists involved in burning down the Reichstag. His fiancée, Woman Detective Charlotte Ritter, pursues her own angle on the case.

This is the first novel in the series that I have got round to reading. Perhaps it would have been better to read the previous ones first for background on the characters but mostly it works as a stand-alone. I found it to be a bit of a mixed bag but decided on four stars because I loved the atmosphere it creates. I can see why it would be turned into a television series although I haven’t seen that either. Obviously the novel will draw comparisons with Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series, detectives, Nazis etc. but that is where it ends. There is no humour in this novel and the descriptions of the characters’ lives and experiences have a much harder edge. I could feel the fear and tension and I thought the creeping insidiousness of Nazi influence and the indifference of those who thought it would never happen were extremely well portrayed.

Having said that the novel did not really hold my attention in the first half. It is long, therefore full of detail and different strands, although the basic concept is fairly simple, find the murderer whose motive dates back to WWI. It is told from various points of view so I found it difficult to sort out their relevance and slot them into the narrative. It is not until about the 40% mark that the novel starts to take off, when the various elements fall into place. I thought the plot was interesting and a bit different but it sometimes gets lost in the historical and personal detail.