Babylon Berlin

Gereon Rath, Book 1

De: Volker Kutscher

Narrado por: Mark Meadows

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

Not as good as the TV series

The story is similar and the writing is OK, but it has nothing of the pizazz of the TV series.

Ok plot, weak writing, decent reader

The plot is ok. Period details are interesting, romance is poorly written. Reader starts off seeming too slow and stilted, but has a good range of accents and voices (and good balance between German vs Anglicized pronunciation for names)

if you are a fan of German detective novels?...

Loved the narrator! Loved the setting and story! on par with Phillip Kerr Bernie Gunther series!

Really entertaining and well crafted story

I liked the story a lot albeit a bit forced at times but well thought of and rounded up quite satisfactorily

Tough book to listen to.

I adored Babylon Berlin on Netflix & was sad to get to the end of the final episode; so the story is definitely there. I just couldn't get in to the Audible book. Maybe the story is just too complicated for me to listen to; I certainly think the material itself is BRILLIANT but I'd find my mind wandering to things I need to do, people I need to talk to, etc., & then realize I was out of the book & totally lost. This happened over & over again. Ultimately couldn't get through it but because I love the story & characters so much, I'll likely try it again someday.