Thursday, February 15, 2007

The Good German

I read this page-turner a while back and enjoyed it quite a bit. I'm glad to see it's been turned into a movie, although I'm not sure I'll make it to the theater to see it. The setting is post-World War II Germany, Berlin specifically. I am somewhat familiar with that territory, having had the privilege to be in Berlin at the 50th anniversary of the end of the war. The book does not center around German struggles, despite the title, so not to worry for those Deutsch-o-phobes out there. It's basically a detective story with a few twists and turns set in the bombed-out center of a ruined totalitarian state. It had me guessing as far as the mystery goes, but I've never been good at figuring out mysteries. The novel does follow a fairly tried-and-true formula, but it's a well-crafted genre book with an interesting cast of characters. I found myself rooting for the good guys and against the bad guys, and I ask nothing more of a good detective story. There is a sex scene in the novel -- nothing Hollywood would find at all racy, but some more conservative readers might. This book is a follow-up to the more successful Los Alamos. Both novels are recommended. The author is Joseph Kanon.

1 comment:

ScottVW said...

I just went to see the movie version of this book, and of course the movie plays up the film noir side of the novel. I read the novel as more of a detective story with a love triangle, but the movie definitely showed me the roots the novel has in film noir. The good guy/bad guy equation also is more complicated after seeing the movie -- the impact of the bad things in the novel is felt more (for me) when portrayed on the giant screen. The movie stayed pretty true to the book's plotline, and Steven Soderbergh did a good job directing the movie as an out-and-out noir feature. Usually, the book is better than the movie. In this case, that holds true, but the movie is still a good genre piece in its own right.