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  • Babylon Berlin

  • Gereon Rath, Book 1
  • By: Volker Kutscher
  • Narrated by: Mark Meadows
  • Length: 18 hrs and 2 mins
  • 4.2 out of 5 stars (254 ratings)
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Babylon Berlin

By: Volker Kutscher
Narrated by: Mark Meadows
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Summary

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

What listeners say about Babylon Berlin

Average customer ratings
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  • 4 out of 5 stars
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  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    1 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    3 out of 5 stars

Berlin based

Berlin based story so why has narrator opted for his chosen accents , makes the storyline very hard to get into and doesn't help create the atmoshpere of the late 1920s Berlin. Better sticking to the DVDs at least you get to hear it in German, making the characters a lot more believable.

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4 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    3 out of 5 stars

quite good

Quite good, was looking for something like the Bernie Gunther books. it's not in the same league, but it's ok

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Detailed and well constructed narrative

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.

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3 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    4 out of 5 stars
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    2 out of 5 stars

Meh. Gave up after 13 hours

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.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

Excellent book

Much more streamlined than the TV production. Well written with good detail and character development.

The reader is clear and well modulated, but NEEDS NEW ACCENTS, or to use no accent at all. Why germans would sound like cockneys, eludes me. Better no accent than one utterly alien. Why not sound Italian or Chinese?

Definitely a good read.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars
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    5 out of 5 stars

excellent crime caper

love this book brilliant story line great story teller. will be listening again to this story. simply brilliant hooked on the story


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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    3 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Confusing delivery of a good story.

I bought this book having seen the exceptionally good German TV production of the same name. Their attention to detail and historical accuracy was way up there with the very best albeit the story differed from the book slightly. My confusion really is with the ability of the books author to capture the environment of 1920's Berlin, or not as it happens. The story is a good one, most of the characters are well crafted and the period is fascinating particularly from a German perspective however its written in an American style modern procedural detective style complete with forensic departments and paramedics none of which existed at that time, indeed the entire narrative was littered with this type of misnomer.

All in all lazy research spoilt what should have been a particularly good book.

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2 people found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
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    4 out of 5 stars

Atmospheric, yet predictable, police procedural

I found this book to be very enjoyable but not genuinely gripping.

The atmosphere of 1920's Berlin comes through strongly which is just as well because the plot and characters are not particularly memorable.

The characters are the usual police procedural line up: lonely male with troubled past; senior officer showing him how to bend the rules; politically minded police chiefs; independent and very gorgeous young woman ; pseudo-sophisticated crime lord . . . I felt it was only the historical context which lifted the book. The Nazis, the communists and the ravers prowling the city were the most enjoyable parts of the book.

Narration is excellent and I will probably go on to explore the series.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    4 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    4 out of 5 stars

Weimar Wipeout

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.

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1 person found this helpful

  • Overall
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Performance
    5 out of 5 stars
  • Story
    5 out of 5 stars

A Thriller of the First Order

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.

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