East Berlin 1975. Oberlertnant Karin Muller is having problems at home and a body has been found near the Berlin Wall. The Stasi has asked the police to investigate, but with conditions. Ai came upon this series accidentally and am glad I did. The tension and twists had me flipping each page wondering what was coming next over Muller’s horizon. Am looking forward to reading more!

A NetGalley ARC

Excellent! I can’t wait for the next in this triology.

This was a very dark; however, I assume, a fairly honest representation of living in East Germany during the 1970s and under the reign of the Stasi. This novel combined many of my interests: historical fiction; East Germany; and a crime novel. What also drew me to the book, was that it won the CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger (2016). The story flips back and forth between the crime investigation in real time and the victims back story, which eventually collides with the current timeline. This story was well-written; however, not for the faint of heart. I enjoyed Karin Mueller and look forward to reading the next novel, Stasi Wolf.

I received a copy of this title from Netgalley in exchange for an honest review

This is a Cold War thriller that has nothing to do with nuclear annihilation or international espionage. The focus is on a murder investigation in East Berlin, and all the players are East Germans.

Readers familiar with Cold War novels set in Communist East Germany will feel at home in the setting and tone that Young creates. Readers new to the genre will quickly feel the bleakness of life in East Germany, from the pollution to inadequate winter clothing to the construction of monolithic Soviet block apartments.

Nothing is quite straight forward. Everyone has something to hide and/or some kind of damage that’s a weak spot that can be manipulated by those in power. Citizens have to walk a straight line to avoid suspicion. These threats are bad, but worst of all is the corrosive force of relentless propaganda and paranoia that wears people down. Everyone is a potential informer spying on everyone else, even family members.

[Read more: https://www.criminalelement.com/blogs/2017/08/review-stasi-child-by-david-young#more]

A great novel for fans of child 44, a new detective series set in East Berlin... Will there be another novel to tie up all the loose ends! I hope so!

I am mad with the author because the idea of the novel had so much potential. Moreover, the real historical information was interesting and could have resulted in an amazing historical mystery. Too bad the writing did not live up to the idea.

The blurb immediately drew my attention, a mystery set in 1975 East Berlin with a DDR police woman as main character. I do have a soft spot for books set in Berlin before the wall fell and for the city in general so I was looking forward to dive in the atmosphere of that time. Tough luck because that never happened.

Oberleutenant Karin Müller is the youngest woman leader of a crime unit and is requested to assist a Stasi Officer with the investigation of the murder of an unknown young girl. Strangely, the girl appears to be shot as she was fleeing from West to the East, contrary to the general migration current. Karin soon realizes the crime scene is staged and embarks in a quest to dicover the identity of the girl and of the murderer. Obviously, the political climate being what it is and working for the Stasi will make her investigation feel like she is working on a mined field.

I believe the weakest point of the novel was its characters, especially Karin. Being the chief of her team I would expect her to be smart, tough, self-confident. Instead, she almost throws up when she sees the dead body and blushes for every minor compliment she receives from her annoying, obnoxious deputy. God, I think I read that word more than 30 times. She seemed to redden every few pages from any minuscule thing. I almost have up the novel because of this. Moving on, Karin’s relationship with her husband seemed forced only for the plot’s sake which became even more obvious with the preposterous coincidences that moved the story forward. Actually, the whole book is filled with these amazing coincidences. And the ending…The discovery of the killer was so under climatic and so easily passed over that I forgot immediately about the whole scene. I hated that the killer wasn’t even a character in the book and had maybe two sentences written about him. This , for me is a serious plot construction error.

Moving on to the writing, it was bad, pedestrian even. The period was not researched enough, in my opinion, because I did not feel any of the pressure I usually experience when I read books about that time and space. Moreover, the author adopted an abundance of cliches and the ending was more taken out from a Jack Reacher novel than a quality mystery.

Let’s hope this will be the last unpleasant surprise for this year.

I received this copy from the publisher via NetGalley in exchange for an honest review.

This was a good murder mystery/thriller based in the mid 1970's in Berlin, Germany before The Wall came down.

This is the first in a series and a debut novel by David Young. I will look forward to and continue reading the Karin Muller series.

Thanks to netgalley and St Martin's Press for this advanced readers copy.