The Man from Berlin (A Gregor Reinhardt Novel Book 1)

This is a very good first novel. McCallin carves out some fresh fictional territory, setting this W#orld War II murder mystery in Sarajevo, occupied jointly by the Croatian fascists and Nazi Germany, who are trying to suppress the surging Partisans and hold Bosnia with its many conflicting nationalities and political factions.Gregor Reinhardt is an officer of the Abwehr, the German military foreign intelligence branch. Normally occupied interrogating captured Partisans, he suddenly finds himself assigned to investigate the killing of a fellow officer. Reinhardt, a detective who fell into disfavor and left the Berlin force after the Nazis’ rise, regains some purpose in life investigating this case.The Abwehr officer is found dead in sensational circumstances, a double homicide along with a sexy Croatian filmmaker and journalist, the Leni Reifenstahl of Croatia, found stabbed to death in her own boudoir.The Croatian police insist on handling Marija Vukic’s killing. Reinhardt investigates his colleague’s death, which hardly anyone seems to care about, but more questions are raised. What were the two doing together? Why were they killed?Reinhardt senses almost immediately that others know more than they are telling about the killing. The Croatians want a fall guy to pin the case on so that they can close it – and close the door on an event sullying the image of a national hero.But Reinhardt thinks even his own boss, the generally benign Major Freilinger, is holding something back. His investigation begins to point uncomfortably at a popular and effective German general, essential to a major offensive now beginning against the Partisans.There’s a lot that’s good there. McCallin does a fine job setting the stage in Sarajevo. The byzantine ethnic rivalries in the area plus German organizational rivalries – the Wehrmacht, Abwehr, SS, the MPs – nicely muddy the waters of this murder mystery.Plus there’s the very nature of the killing. If a German officer is investigating the murder of a fascist hero, do you, the English language reader, want him to succeed? Is the killer someone you want caught? Is a good-guy general still a good guy if he’s in the German army?Reinhardt has something in common with Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther, a middle-aged cop and World War I veteran who navigates the treacherous political waters of Nazi Germany in a very good series.But Gunther is a noir detective, redoubtable and assured of himself, while Reinhardt is more vulnerable, mired in an identity crisis for years that Bosnia’s dirty war is now bringing to a head. As the title notes, this is Book 1, and we’ll see more of Reinhardt in the future.The war in Yugoslavia has recently become a fictional setting for several good war novels, including one of Kerr’s books, perhaps because of the former Yugoslavia’s recent troubles, perhaps because other settings have been overused, perhaps because its complexity makes for weightier reading and resists black and white treatments.McCallin falls guilty of some of the latter. His partisans verge on being two-dimensional heroes out of a Stalin poster, and he has apparently bought the Communists’ writing of Yugoslavia’s wartime history, in which they were heroic and tireless resisters of the Nazis while the Serb monarchist Chetniks were collaborators. This is disputed. But otherwise, he does justice to the material, and there’s a lot left for him to work with in a sequel. Wartime atrocities in Yugoslavia committed by the Ustashe sickened even the Nazis, if you can believe it.

Okay, not great. Writing style is boring and unenjoyable. There are a few grammatical errors. I will not read any more books by this guy.

Sarajevo in 1943 makes a fantastic setting for an intricate mystery/thriller. Yugoslavia has been captured by the Germans, who turn part of the country over to their allies the ultra-nationalist Croats of the Ustase Party.Sarajevo is part of the Independent State of Croatia, but the city has also been home to large groups of Muslims and Serbs, the latter having their own paramilitary group, the Cetniks, fighting for independence. Add the Communist Partisans into the mix and you've got a setting teeming with tension and intrigue.When a rising star in the Ustase Party, a beautiful woman who was a journalist, and a German officer are found murdered, the case is turned over to Captain Gregor Reinhardt, an intelligence officer who is also a former police detective and World War I veteran. Reinhardt's personal life is coming apart at the seams, memories of his dead wife and the probable loss of his estranged son at Stalingrad sending him into a alcoholic tailspin.Reinhardt is teamed with a Croatian police officer who is less interested in finding the killer or killers than using the case to settle some scores with non-Croats, but as he digs into it the German officer finds something he thought was lost forever: a purpose.I enjoyed this story, which is layered and has some interesting twists and turns. After a nice buildup of tension, the end chapters are a bit more action-oriented than I expected. My two quibbles would be to say the book was overlong by about fifty pages and an occasional use of modern terminology, especially in the dialogue. This is all the more jarring as the author obviously did careful research of other aspects of the period and setting.

Although one can list many similarities between Capt. Reinhardt and Bernie Gunther - the war, their position as ex-police, their maverick personas, etc., Reinhardt doesn't have the sarcasm - some would say suicidal sense of humor - as Philip Kerr's protagonist. Although I do love the character of Bernie and I am saddened that his writer has exited from this world, I do feel that the torch has been passed to this more serious character of Capt. Reinhardt, and though I have only read the first book in the series I eagerly await the unfolding of this character's personality, which I think will be multi-dimensional. I was extremely taken with this book and although the interplay among the various factions (Croats, Bosnians, Serbs, Muslims, Christians) was at times confusing, it did echo the real situation in the Balkan part of the world. I remember being utterly lost in trying to understand the Bosnia-Herzegovina ethnic cleansings during the Clinton administration. Now I see that this bad blood goes back long before that and even longer if we go back centuries. But in the end, good people are good people, no matter their ethnicity, religion or country of origin and this book hammers that idea home in a very convincing way....

A great crime roller coaster with compelling characters and a great plot. A real page turner.

Set in Sarajevo, in 1943, this novel features Captain Gregor Reinhardt, a previous detective in Berlin, who is now a member of military intelligence. This is obviously set in the Second World War and things are rarely clear cut and like so many crime novels set in this era, such as the fabulous Bernie Gunther series, there is little that is black and white in the beginning of this series either. For Reinhardt, who gained an Iron Cross in WWI, found his career in the police stalled after he refused to join the Party. His personal life is also in turmoil, after losing his beloved wife and the rejection of his son, Friedrich, who is a great believer in the National Socialists and is currently serving somewhere in Russia. Rumours about what is happening in Stalingrad are reaching the ears of those based in Sarajevo and it is obvious that the Russian front is somewhere to be avoided. However, the setting of Sarajevo provides a colourful and complicated backdrop to the story.As far as the crime element of this novel is concerned, it involves the murder of a German officer, and Abwehr lieutenant, Stefan Handel, and a beautiful film maker and socialite, Marija Vukic. Reinhardt is told to work with a local investigator from the Sarajevo police, Andro Padelin. As well as this encumbrance, he also has to deal with Major Becker of the Military Police, which whom he shares a difficult history. His attempts to discover the truth about the murder ruffles more than a few feathers and Reinhardt has to tread carefully between his superior officers, the local police – who are extremely ruthless and seem keen to pin the murders on anyone they can beat into a confession - and the Partisans.I did feel at times that the story was a little slow. Obviously, this is very much a literary mystery and I am always happy with historical detail. However, there is also a fine line between exploring themes and moving the action along and, at times, this stalled just a little. Still, it was an interesting novel, I liked the character of Reinhardt and I would certainly read on in this series as I would like to know more about him. I thought the author did an excellent job of exploring a lesser explored location and Sarajevo really came alive in this book. The ending also offered various possibilities for the series to continue and I will certainly look forward to continuing reading more.

Having read all of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels, apart from the latest one, Prussian Blue, I thought I'd try Luke McCallin's The Man from Berlin. Gregor Reinhardt is a sensitive soul who is clearly suffering from PTSD, having seen horrors during his military career with the Abwehr. His time as a Berlin detective comes in more than useful in war-torn Sarajevo and elsewhere in the Balkans and this is a very vivid story, steeped in atmosphere. McCallin's style is wordier than Kerr's and at times I felt was over-written, so perhaps his editor could do a bit of pruning in future. This novel is a slow burn as you realise that the murder of Marija Vukic, a Leni Riefenstahl-type film director/journalist, is not as straightforward as it looks - I won't spoil the plot for other readers - but the novel gathers pace and is a superb read. I was reading it into the small hours and said "just another chapter, and then sleep". Now for the next novel featuring Captain Reinhardt.

Like a lot of reviewers I came to these books after having finished the Bernie Gunther series. The first two books in the series are set in the Balkans during WW2 and the last one in Berlin just after the end of the war. The scenes and characters are described vividly and the stories rattle on at a good pace but some more careful editing is required. I got a bit fed up with certain repetitions such as "he felt cold sweat running down his back" and " his tongue searched the gap in his teeth". I enjoyed the third book the most with its unexpected twist at the end. They are definitely worth reading but some persistence is required.

McCallin has made life difficult for himself with this opening title in the Luke Reinhardt series. Featuring a German who struggles to work with the Nazis, who has a dead wife and previously worked as a policemen in Berlin before the war puts his character dangerously close to Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther, so the inevitable comparisions will be made. McCallin sets the story in the Balkan theatre of the war, but at heart it's a murder mystery featuring the German military operation in that part of Europe. He's good on the fleshing out his characters, but the book wanders on way too long and would have been better if it had shed around 100 pages. The finale meanders a bit and feels overwrought, and where Kerr's often over-plotted thrillers featuring Gunther are often spiked with wit to lighten the mood, McCallin lays some of the angst on here with a trowel.The Kindle version is strangely formatted, with double-spaces between paragraphs that really breaks the flow of the text up, especially during passages of dialogue. The start of each chapter is slightly greyed out, and a larger font often wanders in for part of the backstory stages of the book. It doesn't add to the e-reading experience, and No Exit Press really needs to get its act together as this is the second of their titles where the e-version has been less than satisfactory. The quality of the story and Kindle issues combine to give a mediocre reading experience here.

Cracking good read. Good plot and great characters. A little convoluted in places but well worth reading. Gritty in places but real and certainly not gratuitous Seemed historically sound. Moves along at a good pace, although occasional Americanism seemed a little out of place.My only slight criticism is that it was maybe fifty pages to long.I enjoyed it enough that I will be buying the next one.Not in the Bernie Gunther class just yet, different rather than comparable.