Shadow and Light: Summary and book reviews of Shadow and Light by Jonathan Rabb, plus links to an excerpt from Shadow and Light and a biography of Jonathan Rabb.

Berlin, between the two world wars. When an executive at the renowned Ufa film studios is found dead floating in his office bathtub, it falls to Nikolai Hoffner, a chief inspector in the Kriminalpolizei, to investigate. With the help of Fritz Lang (the German director) and Alby Pimm (leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin), Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin’s sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler’s Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Being swept up in the case are Hoffner’s new lover, an American talent agent for Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, and his two sons: Georg, who has dropped out of school to work at Ufa, and Sascha, his angry, older son, who, unknown to his father, has become fully entrenched in the new German Workers Party as the aide to its Berlin leader, Joseph Goebbels. When we last met Hoffner, it was 1919, and he had taken on the disappearance and death of Rosa Luxembourg in Rosa, a novel the critic John Leonard hailed as “a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux.” Shadow and Light is equally brilliant and atmospheric, and even harder to put down or shake off. Like Joseph Kanon or Alan Furst, Rabb magically fuses a smart, energetic narrative with layers of fascinating, vividly documented history. The result is a stunning historical thriller, created by a writer to celebrate—and contend with.

BookBrowse

Rabb is a master at creating atmosphere, of firmly moving the reader to the time and place he has created... A lesser writer could easily be crushed under the layers of detail and plot, setting, and character; Rabb juggles them all so smoothly, the only question the reader wants answered is "what happens next?" or perhaps, "why?"  (Reviewed by Joanne Collings).

Full Review (1261 words).

Media Reviews

New York Times - Joshua Hammer ... the biggest problem with “Shadow and Light” is the plot. Despite a brisk beginning, the narrative soon becomes bogged down by co-conspirators, sinister corporate entities, technical details and extraneous subplots.   The Washington Post - Wendy Smith Rabb writes so well and the mood he creates is so haunting that occasional lapses into noir cliches -- a femme fatale whose betrayals grow steadily more predictable, the inevitable confrontation with an untouchable bigwig -- are more jarring than they would be in a less accomplished novel.   Booklist There’s plenty of Weimar decadence on view here, but it’s the fascinating slice of film history overlaid with a sense of the gathering storm that gives the novel its punch. That and Hoffner himself, a noir hero in every way, from his unquenchable thirst for potables to the inevitability with which he finds himself caught in the riptide of history.   Kirkus Reviews Rabb's prose can occasionally be provokingly gnomic, but as usual, he has a good story to tell and most readers will bear with him contentedly.   Bookpage Rabb to call on his true strengths as a writer, most notably his atmospheric evocation of time and place. The city itself is an important character in the book, and Weimar Berlin is brilliantly portrayed in all its gritty decadence and postwar opportunism. . . Shadow and Light is an entertaining book that demands a bit more concentration than most books in the genre, but the effort pays off.   Library Journal Starred Review. Both a first-rate historical novel and a singularly artful crime noir.   Publishers Weekly. Starred Review. Well-conceived cameos by director Fritz Lang and actor Peter Lorre add to the intrigue.

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Books with similar themes

• Historical Fiction
  
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• 1920s & '30s