Stasi Child cover art

Stasi Child

 Preview

Get 30 days of Standard free

£5.99/mo after trial. Cancel monthly.
Try for £0.00
More purchase options

Stasi Child

By: David Young
Narrated by: Julia Barrie
Try for £0.00

£5.99 a month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for £13.89

Buy Now for £13.89

East Berlin, 1975: When Oberleutnant Karin Müller is called to investigate a girl's body at the foot of the Wall, she realises this is a death like no other. It seems the girl was trying to escape - but from the West. The Stasi want her to discover the identity of the girl, but assure Müller the case is otherwise closed. This is not a regime that tolerates a curious mind, and Müller doesn't realise that the trail she's following will lead her dangerously close to home…©2015 David Young (P)2016 W.F. Howes Ltd Crime Fiction Historical Fiction Mystery Police Procedural Thriller & Suspense Fiction Espionage
adbl_web_anon_alc_button_suppression_t1
All stars
Most relevant
I enjoyed this but it didn t grip me... there's something not quite right about the way Karin the main character is written... I just didn t care about her enough... didn t know her. Great performance though from narrator

Very good listen

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Really and truly, listening to this reader almost caused me to stop listening to a good story. Like listening to Moaning Myrtle.

Good story, killed by poor reader

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Mein gott, this is a long winded story. I'm still 2 hours away from the finish and couldn't really care less about who in fact dunnit.
Potentially a decent story pretty much ruined by being way too long.
I love the narrator though, so that's a good point.
3/5 is very generous.

Too long

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
Stasichild is David Young's excellent debut novel. Set in East Berlin in 1975.  A teenage girl's body is found near the Berlin Wall (or the anti-fascist protection barrier).  But the question is, who is she? where did she come from? and how and where did she die?  To answer these questions,  Oberleutnant  Karin Muller and her team are drawn into the seedy side of GDR power and influence.

This is a great debut novel full of atmosphere, detail, twists and turns.  It is well researched, with much to offer both the casual reader and those with a special interest in the former East Germany.  I would highly recommend both the print and audio version as I have them both

A great debut novel full of twists and turns

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
In the constant search for new angles on the crime thriller, David Young takes us to the Soviet bloc (not new; Arkady Renko strolled into Gorky Park decades ago), but gives it a little more twist with a female detective. The initial set up of a gruesome murder near the Berlin Wall offers some promise, the forensic side of things is logical and carries one into the story, and the labyrinthine organisational politics ring true.

But for me, it all tailed off after that. The narrator's delivery is a little grating: trying a little too hard, but the main issue is the story goes off into a rather meandering and implausible adventure with a main character who, frankly, does not hold one's interest. This is clearly being set up for a "Karin Muller" series, but in this hopelessly cliched and hackneyed genre, there just is not enough here to tempt me back.

Great start, but fell away

Something went wrong. Please try again in a few minutes.
See more reviews