Shadow and Light, Jonathan Rabb
Shadow and Light, Jonathan Rabb
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Shadow and Light
A Novel

Author: Jonathan Rabb

Narrator: Simon Prebble

Unabridged: 11 hr 55 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Publisher: Tantor Media

Published: 05/28/2009

Synopsis

Berlin, between the two world wars. When an executive at the renowned Ufa film studios is found dead floating in his office bathtub, it falls to Nikolai Hoffner, a chief inspector in the Kriminalpolizei, to investigate. With the help of Fritz Lang (the German director) and Alby Pimm (leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin), Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin's sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler's Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Being swept up in the case are Hoffner's new lover, an American talent agent for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his two sons: Georg, who has dropped out of school to work at Ufa, and Sascha, his angry, older son, who, unknown to his father, has become fully entrenched in the new German Workers Party as the aide to its Berlin leader, Joseph Goebbels.

Shadow and Light is brilliant and atmospheric, and hard to put down or shake off. Like Joseph Kanon or Alan Furst, Rabb magically fuses a smart, energetic narrative with layers of fascinating, vividly documented history. The result is a stunning historical thriller, created by a writer to celebrate—and contend with.

About Jonathan Rabb

Jonathan Rabb is the author of the novels Rosa, The Overseer, and The Book of Q. He lives with his wife, Andra, and two children in New York.

Reviews

Goodreads review by Richard on January 28, 2009

There are three detectives that I've grown fond of: Donna Leon's Guido Brunetti is the most well adjusted of the three. He's a family man, loves his wife and kids, tries to make it home for dinner, treats people well, and solves the horrendous cases he's given. Dotore Brunetti is Italian. Arkady Ren......more

Goodreads review by Joe on February 26, 2020

This is the second adventure – after the excellent Rosa – of Berlin police detective Nikolai Hoffner. It is now 1927 and our hero is called in to investigate the apparent suicide of a movie executive at the renowned Ufa studios and needless to say, Herr Hoffner smells a rat. Before it’s all said and......more

Goodreads review by Elizabeth (Alaska) on April 04, 2022

This second in the trilogy has Nikolai Hoffner looking at Germany's film industry on the eve of talking pictures. Hoffner had not been aware that sound could be added to film. One of his contacts tells him: "Without sound," said Vogt, "all you have is shadow and light. Flat, soulless barren. Sound i......more

Goodreads review by Lewis on January 07, 2013

This is a complex story, and I'm not sure I understood all of the pieces even when I finished the book, and certainly not while reading it. But that may well be the point. Berlin 1927 was a chaotic combination of dark forces, working at cross-purposes in which the only clear common ingredients were......more

Goodreads review by Donna on March 04, 2013

Probably because I was more familiar with the too-numerous characters, I found this an easier read than Rosa. In both books plots are over-complicated and labyrinthine. Nikolai Hoffner is not a very good father, a terrible husband, and very careless of his women. However, I like him and worry about......more

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