“Max and Anna are in love and want to get
married. But this is Germany, 1938. Their union is against Nazi laws, as Anna
is part-Jewish. A Gestapo officer agrees to authorize the marriage, but only if
Max infiltrates and betrays a Marxist resistance cell, the Red Orchestra. This
is not an assignment that Max can refuse. If he succeeds, Anna will get the
wedding she longs for, but many brave resistance fighters will die…”
This is a novel worth reading for it offers insight into Hitler’s
Germany from a German perspective. The plot is intricate and very well handled
in a modern thriller (Lee Child-like) style. The story follows a year in the
life of Max-Christian and Anna, a perfectly ordinary couple who want to get
married in pre-World War II Berlin. Max is a clerk, Anna works in a department
store, there is no opposition from parents and they are financially secure, but
the requisite marriage licence is unobtainable because one of Anna’s grandparents
had Jewish blood. Max’s attempts to obtain the licence lead him into very deep
waters: firstly with the Communist ‘Red Orchestra’ spreading anti-Nazi
propaganda then with Hitler’s men who demand he supply them with information
about the Communists. It is no spoiler to say that Max becomes a humble
double-agent, but it would ruin the story to say how.
This novel conveys the pressures and tensions of the late 1930s in
Berlin extremely well and we meet various real ‘players’ from the period as
J.J. Toner weaves real events and people into his narrative. After an excellent
opening, however, the novel becomes rather one-paced. Although I feared for the
young couple it became increasingly difficult to empathise with them because
their characters remain undeveloped. Almost no back-story explains their
choices and actions, and Anna is presented as selfish and petty until the final
section where she agrees to help a Jewish family, meaning this reader began to
lose interest in her early on. Secondary and minor characters tend to speak in
the same manner, with the exception of Max’s mother, whose strange behaviour was
an ironic touch of normality. Characters also constantly address each other by
name, which is something we rarely do in conversation and must have been
downright unwise given the clandestine and dangerous nature of what they were telling
each other.
The author sets up scenes well as Max reluctantly goes about his
intelligence-gathering, but terrific opportunities to build tension in key
moments, such as when he is first challenged to produce false papers in the
guise of a pastor while on a ‘run’ to Belgium, are lost. An SS officer pushes
his way into their home and rapes Anna, but the author only tells us what happens and Anna’s feelings
are conspicuously absent. In this regard, while the writer’s chosen style
conveys what is happening among decision-makers in London very well, it fails
to relay the tensions and constant fear implicit in trying to live a normal
life when very abnormal things are happening, when loyalties are so tested and
relationships so fragile. The text, however, is faultless and the proofreader
is to be commended.
Ultimately, like the curate’s egg, this book is very good in parts: a story
well worth reading and an author to look out for.
© J.G. Harlond
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