City of Shadows

I picked up this book by Ariana Franklin, because I had been so taken with her medieval mysteries (see Mistress of the Art of Death and The Serpent's Tale) and was surprised to find this set in 1920's and early 30's Berlin. The "White Russians" have fled the Bolshevik revolution, the Communists and the National Socialists are in a no-holds-barred fight for the hearts and minds of the German populace that is being slammed by exponential inflation as the Weimar Republic staggers to its knees, and Jews are--as always--being blamed for everything. The criminals and thugs are prospering either through illegal activity or through gang violence, and yet people still long to believe in fairy tales, like the one about one of the Romanov children having escaped the slaughter of the czar's family. So when Esther Solomonova's boss, "Prince Nick," a corrupt nightclub owner, decides to rescue a woman from an asylum and pass her off as Anastasia, Esther is roped into the helping the young woman. Her objections to the fraud become secondary, however, when people around the fake czarina begin to die. Once again, we see how fear and complacency allow evil to blossom as Germany heads for the horrors of WWII and the purge of anyone non-Aryan, and non-conforming. Still, in spite of the grim historic situation, there is a bit of romance and a fairy tale ending to this one, so dive in and enjoy Franklin's rich attention to historic detail and character development. You'll need to suspend your disbelief a bit, but then we all do that every day, don't we?