FROM OUR EDITORS

A young American doctoral student, Annie Pohlmann, comes to Munich in 1972 to do research for her dissertation. She is interviewing Fritz Stecher, a former detective inspector in the Kriminalpolizei about a 1929 investigation that was seminal in the development of modern police procedures. Stecher says too much attention has been paid to that investigation and insists on discussing the 1931 purported suicide of Geli Raubal, the teenage niece and alleged lover of Adolf Hitler. Through a series of flashbacks, Stecher relates the tale of his attempted investigation, which is opposed by forces outside the police from the beginning. When Stecher first arrives at the scene, the body has already been removed by some of Hitler's minions, including Rudolf Hess. The doctor who would normally perform the autopsy says he has never seen the body. Stecher's superior officer gives him the mission of finding out the truth but then sends Stecher on leave, because he can't investigate fully in an official capacity. Foiled at almost every turn by various members and supporters of the National German Socialist Workers' Party (NSDAP, or Nazis), Stecher nonetheless persists with his inquiry.

The historical information woven into the story is interesting and gives a good summary of politics in early 1930s Germany for those who are unacquainted with the period. Rusch's writing, especially the dialogue, impressively conveys the aura of mistrust, dread, and intimidation surrounding people at all levels who were not members of the NSDAP. This is a fascinating exploration of the psyche of the main character and the pressures brought to bear on him as he investigates a crime that might have changed the course of history. This novel, which is based on an actual historical incident, is a departure from the author's usual science fiction and fantasy, but it marks a stunning debut in the mystery field.

—Sue Reider

FROM THE PUBLISHER

This much is true: Hitler had a love affair with his niece Geli Raubal. On the night of September 19, 1931, Geli was found dead of a gunshot wound in Hitler's apartment in Munich. Her death was ruled a suicide, but the suspicion of murder has remained. Kris Rusch begins her story in Munich in 1972, when a young American criminologist comes to interview Fritz Stecher, one of Germany's most famous detectives. The young American finds him stubborn, reluctant even to discuss the case that forced his retirement - about which no one in the world has heard. But for her, Fritz goes back to 1931, just two years before Hitler rose to power, to tell of his investigation of Geli's death. Though Fritz didn't know, could not have known, the course of his investigation - the decisions he made and the actions he took and didn't take - determined the course of history.

FROM THE CRITICS

Josh Rubins

Rusch has obviously done her homework and overlooks none of the nasty possibilities....[She] manages...to invest her historical fabrication with the everyday bleadness and narrative economy of a European police procedural. -- New York Times Book Review

AudioFile

Kris Rusch, a well-known and respected science-fiction author, here ventures into historical fiction, larded with pop psychology. Through flashbacks and risky changes in tense, she tells the story of the murder of Adolf Hitler's niece, Geli Raubal, and why the lead detective on the case failed. This is a novel of almost unrelieved gloom exacerbated by the glacial pace that reader Susan O'Malley adopts. While she articulates German names and places well, O'Malley scarcely distinguishes the characters at all. Most important, she moves from one scene to another with a numbing deliberateness no matter what is happening in the story. D.R.W. (c) AudioFile 2002, Portland, Maine

Kirkus Reviews

Munich, 1972. Annie Pohlmann, working on a Harvard dissertation on police procedures, is interviewing Fritz Stecher, retired Detective Inspector of the Kripo, about his pioneering work in forensic investigation, when a chance question no earlier interviewer had ever thought to ask himþwhy did he retire prematurely over 40 years ago?þopens a Pandora's box of revelations about his last case. The victim: Angela Raubal, niece of National Socialist party leader Adolf Hitler, shot to death in her uncle's apartment. By the time Stecher and his men arrived on the scene, the body had already been spirited away to discreet interment in Vienna, leaving behind only a brusque note from the Bavarian minister of justice, Franz G￯﾿ﾽrtner, identifying Geli Raubal's death as suicide. But none of the evidence Stecher turned upþthe time of Geli's death, her broken nose, the shocking signs of earlier beatings, the indications that Hitler was her loverþconfirmed this verdict, even though the more he pressed, the more emphatic the denials grew. Eventually Stecher, haunted by his own wife's death, set the case aside, just in time for Hitler's election as Chancellor in 1933. Now he's finally ready to face the truth. SF/fantasy veteran Rusch turns the real-life story of Geli's death into a workmanlike parable with little mystery, since the solution is as predictable as the Had-I-But-Known moral.