By having Russell and Effi looking for two missing Jews in immediate post-war Berlin and Vienna and the surrounding regions, we are taken thru a hugely interesting landscape of displaced Europe and the machinations of the Great Powers. Throw in Russell's spying for the US and the Soviets and some of the despicable characters "used" by both sides, we end up with a very rich story.

This is a very good book, number five, in Downing's six novel series with John Russell. Well plotted and well written. ( )

A worthy addition to the Russell canon, but I probably wouldn't start here. ( )

This is the fifth novel in the John Russell/Effi Koenen series set around the second world war. In this novel the war has been over for a few months and it is late 1945 in a ruined Berlin divided between the four occupying powers. Having been reunited at the end of the war after three years apart John and Effi have been living in London of late, but are drawn back to Berlin through his spying activities, her starring in a film about the life of a Holocaust survivor, and their joint search for family and friends who disappeared in the war, in particular the biological father of their adopted daughter Rosa. As with the previous novels in the series, the atmosphere is very well described, though the plot also does tender to meander. In the confused and chaotic atmosphere, characters such as black-marketeer Rudolf Geruschke are able to thrive and do deals with the occupying powers, while horrible things continue to happen, with hospitals being deprived of medicines, while black market prices for them skyrocket and children die; Jewish Holocaust survivors are still subject to anti-semitic attacks; Germans expelled from newly expanded Polish territory (mostly innocent civilians) are subjected to the same mistreatment as the Nazis meted out to the Poles; the occupying powers, spiralling towards the cold war, are mostly uninterested in bringing individual lower level Nazis to justice; groups of Jewish survivors carry out private acts of vengeance, killing individual Nazis they identify, while most Jews flee to Palestine seeking what seems to be the only true protection of setting up their own state. Against this backdrop, John and Effi face and overcome a whole range of threats and the novel ends with their disparate families reunited once again. ( )

Set in Berlin in the chaos of the end of WW2 as the Occupying Powers jockey for position and Nazis are still operating, often in black markets. John Russell and his lover Effi return there with Russell spying for both Russians and Americans and struggling with his conscience. Very detailed and auhentic sounding descriptions of post-war Berlin and the plight of ordinary Germans as well as those Jews who escaped the Nazis. ( )

With the fifth in the series we're in the immediate post-war period, six months after Berlin fell to the Soviets John & Effi are back. Having escaped to London with the surviving family members John is blackmailed by the Soviets into returning in the guise of a double agent.

As with the previous books the real central character is Berlin and its people. The theme is one of devastation, both human and physical. John & Effi both get involved in finding out what happened to people they knew, and the friends of the survivors. It's mainly upbeat, although sprinkled with tragedy as one would expect.

The book evokes the chaos following the end of the war very well, and the overturning of tables. The 'victims of fascism' are exalted and on double rations, the nazis are trying to hide and avoid retribution. As yet, no-one really feels safe, but things are getting better.

We also see the start of the cold war here. John is working for both American and Soviet intelligence services, although more for himself and Schepkin than for either power. The whole situation is deliberately murky, and Berlin isn't formally divided, the four powers govern it jointly. This creates room for administrative pressure, and allows wandering between zones without fuss. This is used to good effect to add tension and obstacles to the story.

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