City of Shadows

This morning, with great reluctance, I turned the last page of Ariana Franklin's City of Shadows which is just about the best mystery ever. History, politics and unexpected love woven into one my best ever mystery reads. Finest kind to be sure. The author's unique voice, deep knowledge, sly wit, cleverness of phrase and sterling plotting ensures outstanding readability.

This might be one of the best works of historical fiction I've ever read! Excellent character development, and a complete suprise ending that left me stunned! Terrific book and can't wait to read her new one!

I won't waste space going over the plot, as others have already covered it well. This book is just plain brilliant. As with the movie THE SIXTH SENSE, all the clues needed to figure out the true central mystery are there -- but you only realize that once the answer is revealed. The characters are vivid, and the sense of menace as the shadow of National Socialism stretches over Germany is chilling. A keeper, and a book that belongs in the collection of any Anastasia aficionado.

It's 1922 Berlin and Germany is reeling with inflation, anti-Semitism is on the rise, the population is experiencing unemployment of grand proportions, the citizens are literally starving and Adolph Hitler has begun his methodical rise to power. Esther Solonomova, a Jew, is given a job as secretary to the owner of several Berlin nightclubs. Prince Nick is a fake but with all the troubles Germany is experiencing, who cares? Nick is always looking for a way to make money. He learns of an inmate in a local insane asylum who maintains that she is the Grand Duchess Anastasia, the only surviving member of the Russian royal family. Nick takes the woman from the asylum and names her Anna Anderson. With the help of Esther and another of his employees, he begins the preparation that will ultimately have Anna lay claim to the Russian throne as the only surviving heir. But a mysterious man attempts, once every six weeks, to murder Anna. This Nazi murderer continues to fail, but over a span of years people surrounding Anna begin to die. It is up to Esther and Inspector Schmidt to solve the mystery. Ariana Franklin's City of Shadows is a gripping story, based on fact. The writing is taut, the storyline is fascinating and the tension is perfect (building slowing but surely to a surprising end). I felt as if I had been transported to the Berlin of the 1920s and 1930s. City of Shadows is a magnificent novel. Armchair Interviews says: City of Shadows is one of the best reads of 2006.

I found City of Shadows to be magnetic, haunting and tightly constructed. The dialogue is well crafted, the plot, in the shadow of what was about to occur, frightening, and the unexpected twists and surprises, plentiful. Berlin in the 1920's, once a magnificent city, had been disgraced. Germany, late to come to the industrial revolution, had been promised an overwhelming victory in the Great War three years earlier, only to have a crushing military and social defeat. The humiliating Treaty of Versailles, which Germany was forced to sign in order to surrender, was to the German people not merely an acknowledgement of defeat but rather an admission of wrong. Inflation was rampant. A cup of coffee was 1000 marks at breakfast, 1800 by lunch. In the streets, the socialist thugs fought bloody battles with the communist thugs. The Catholics distrusted the Protestants; the farmers distrusted the laborers. Germany needed a hero. Would they get one? No. They got the devil himself. But in the meantime . . . . Franklin begins a tale of murder, conspiracy, romance, anti-semitism, integrity and redemption. Prince Nick, a displaced Russian, owns a series of cabarets in Berlin, catering to the diverse tastes and odd 'late night' habits of his clientele. He hires Esther Solomonova, a Jewish refugee from the Russian Revolution, once lovely, extremely intelligent, multi-lingual, but terribly scarred from her experiences during the fall of the Romanov Empire when the Czar and his entire family were gunned down by the Bolsheviks. Rumors (existing to this day) abound that one of the Romanov children escaped death when her siblings fell upon her. She later lived, hidden by revolutionaries still loyal to the Czar. Always on the lookout to make more money, inflation or not, Nick finds an inmate in a local Bedlam-like hospital who has a strange past. We learn that this woman, whom Nick names 'Anna Anderson,' was an intended but yet unexplained target of a murderer, and Nick concludes, against the analysis of Esther, that this is the missing Princess Anastasia, daughter of the late Czar. Nick's goals are to make money over the unveiling of the 'lost Princess.' Esther's goals are . . . . something else. While all of that may seem slow, it is anything but that. Franklin introduces Inspector Siegfried Schmidt, the last man in the German Police Department with integrity. Schmidt is an old fashioned 'procedure man, piecing together information, meeting Esther, being drawn to her and her odd assortment of friends. He too feels that the search for the reason as to why Anna Anderson was targeted for murder, will shed light on subsequent crimes. Murders continue as the Nazi Party rises. There's a well crafted juxtapositioning of the evil of the Nazi's and the investigation of the murderer. Caberet bartenders, muscular doormen, women impersonators, crazy Russian villagers, socialist thugs, good cops, bad cops, and love permeate all of the chapters. The characters come alive,