Babylon Berlin cover art

Babylon Berlin

Gereon Rath, Book 1

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Babylon Berlin

By: Volker Kutscher
Narrated by: Mark Meadows
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About this listen

Berlin, 1929. Detective Inspector Rath was a successful career officer in the Cologne Homicide Division before a shooting incident in which he inadvertently killed a man. He has been transferred to the vice squad in Berlin, a job he detests even though he finds a new friend in his boss, Chief Inspector Wolter.

There is seething unrest in the city, and the Commissioner of Police has ordered the vice squad to ruthlessly enforce the ban on May Day demonstrations. The result is catastrophic, with many dead and injured, and a state of emergency is declared in the Communist strongholds of the city.

When a car is hauled out of Berlin's Landwehr Canal with a mutilated corpse inside, the Commissioner decides to use this mystery to divert the attention of press and public from the casualties of the demonstrations. The biggest problem is that the corpse cannot be identified.

Volker Kutscher was born in 1962 in Lindlar, West Germany. He is the author of the enormously successful Gereon Rath crime series which, in addition to compelling narrative, is notable for its scrupulous accuracy about Germany in the years between its beginning in 1927 and the approach to the Second World War.

©2016 Volker Kutscher (P)2016 Audible, Ltd Historical International Mystery & Crime Modern Detectives Mystery Police Procedural Fiction Crime Exciting

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All stars
Most relevant
An interesting first novel with an engaging if flawed central character. The translation from the German original version is good and the reader's voice was clear and easy to listen to.

Looking forward to the next audiobooks in the series.

Detailed and well constructed narrative

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Mark Meadows was flawless and amazing in his audio performance to this brilliant hard-boiled German crime fiction by Kutscher. Set in the gangster era of the 1920s in Berlin, the story fascinated me with German police tackling elements of right wing nazis, communists reds, Stalin loyalists jostling for power & influence and their hands on the wealth of Russian aristocrats who have fled mother Russia.

Top notched entertainment. Breathtaking.

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I have a fascination for Berlin, and particularly the between-wars period. I speak German and love crime novels.
So imagine my surprise that after 13 hours I gave up on this one!
The narrator was fine, and I appreciated his generally good pronunciation of German names and words because nothing spoils an audiobook more for me, than people who butcher foreign words.
However this is DULL. With 5 hours to go I decided life is too short to persevere with it.
I won’t be purchasing any other Kutscher books.

Meh. Gave up after 13 hours

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The detail in this type of historical novel is essential. The casual thriller reader is led, sometimes at a vertiginous pace, through the intricacies of German police politics. The decisions here felt personal and you can feel the breath of fatal events hanging over everyone, like a virtual Damocles sword: eerily prescient.

I struggled with the love interest if only because it seemed naive but considering the time it is set it, desperate love was the only constant on offer so I withdraw that caveat.

The best recommendation is the urge to share my pleasure at the topsy world of early 1930’s Berlin: madcap blend of cynicism and hope all in one.

Weimar Wipeout

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Inspector Rath is a career Homicide officer from Cologne who inadvertently kills a man because of the adverse publicity his father who is a Senior Police Officer gets his son a transfer to Berlin using connections. No one in Berlin except the commissioner knows about the incident in Cologne.

I found Babylon Berlin to be a thriller of the first order, an engaging listen, full of twists and turns.
Indeed the story starts with a man who has clearly been tortured. His battered and bruised lifeless body is found in a stolen car which has been dumped in the river. But who is this man? Where had be come from? and why has he met such a grizzly end? Inspector Rath investigates and he finds out a lot about his new colleagues and Berlin along the way.

The narrative and narration are both excellent. I would highly recommend it.

A Thriller of the First Order

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