Ali Karim was a Board Member of Bouchercon [The World Crime & Mystery Convention] and co-chaired programming for Bouchercon Raleigh, North Carolina in 2015. He is Assistant Editor of Shots eZine, British correspondent for The Rap Sheet and writes and reviews for many US magazines & Ezines.
The latest work from Michael Ridpath is one of the most engrossing narratives I have had the good fortune to read this year – or rather live through. I found myself immersed completely into this golden age mystery escaping the anxieties of today, for the machinations of the German Weimar Republic between the two World Wars.
Vivid characterisation is on full display with the two main protagonists, [Sir] Archie Laverick and Esme Carmichael. Laverick is the heir to Yarmer Hall in Yorkshire’s West Riding - a British Aristocrat who survived the horrors of trench warfare in World War One, but returned with both physical and mental scars. His muscular manservant [cum-Batman] Arthur Lister is always by his side managing his episodic fugues [induced by ‘shell-shock’]. Haunted by his war service, which claimed the life of his brother Fred – Archie manages his demons by researching and writing about former historical wartime generals [which he publishes to much acclaim].
Via his cousin Duncan Mandeville, Archie travels to Berlin [with Lister] to research a biography of a Prussian General [Field Marshall Blucher] who fought the French forces during the Napoleonic Wars. There is a curious synchronicity, for the French remain foes in the eyes of 1930s Germany, due to the reparations [and restrictions] imposed by the 1919 Treaty of Versailles.
Archie requires an Anglo-German speaking assistant to help him research the Prussian General. This secretarial support comes in the form of Esme Carmichael – a young American woman [and German speaker] aspiring to become a Foreign Correspondent for a Chicago Newspaper.
What better place than the hot-bed of political and social intrigue than 1930s Berlin for an aspiring young journalist from Montana.
Esme Carmichael has accompanied her University friend Harriet Dryden, [the daughter of Diplomat Walter Dryden] to Berlin with hopes that her connection with US Counselor Dryden may assist in facilitating a political interview that she could sell to the American Press – launching her career as a Foreign Correspondent. While living with the Drydens' she augments her dwindling savings agreeing to assist Archie Laverick in his research of Field Marshall Blucher, who she refers to mischievously as General ‘Bluey’.
The stage is set.
A mystery is about to unravel at the ancestral Burg of the Von Adlerstein clan, where the family have organised a party for a cabal Journalists and Political Commentators. Harriet Dryden brings her friend Esme Carmichael to introduce her to the gathering of Foreign Correspondents in the hope of getting contacts.
The following morning there is a murder, one with political motivation[s] as the murderer [a young Jewish woman with communistic sympathies] has been captured by the police. Esme Carmichael [who witnessed the murder] has doubts as to murderer’s identity, which she shares with Archie and so the game is soon afoot.
The vivid characterisation is not restricted solely to Esme and Archie, for Ridpath deploys deft literary flourishes with an array of supporting players, as well with the backdrops. The Adlon Hotel and streets of Berlin, the railways and countryside of Weimar German play a role in making this novels’ atmosphere edgy and dangerous.
Esme and Archie’s private investigation into the murder is conducted delicately due to the political turmoil of the time, as well as the dangers that they have to confront. There are powerful forces at work behind the scenes who wish the Jewish woman to be convicted for the murder, and hang, thus obscuring the real motive for what Esme and Archie believe is a premeditated assassination. There are insights into Laverick’s past which strain the relationship between our investigators, as well as an aside into book collecting which provides an unlikely ally for the duo.
Rich on detail and atmosphere, Ridpath’s meticulous research does not impede the velocity of the plot, in fact it paradoxically enhances the measured pace. Period detail is gently striated over the proceedings with mention of Hindenburg, Goering, and even an appearance by Adolf Hitler. We experience the lake and riverside south of Berlin as a tourist area, prior to the ‘Wannsee’ name being associated to the 1942 conference that formalised the mechanics of ‘the final solution’. We see political turmoil [prior to Hitler and the Nazi Party coming to power] with street fights between Communists and Nazis giving way to Soviet alliances with the Weimar Republic - all feeding the international journalists gathered in Berlin.
But all the while a young Jewish woman languishes in a Dresden jail-cell accused of a murder that masks a more perplexing reality. Her fate relies on the guile of a British Aristocrat recovering from the horrors of World War One, and the tenacity of his side-kick - an ambitious young American Woman who wants to become a Foreign Correspondent.
I can see how Michael Ridpath’s latest work has been compared to Alan Furst, Robert Harris and Robert Goddard – however because of the dialogue that adroitly peppers the proceedings, I see a closer link to the work of the late Philip Kerr.
As a literary mystery, Operation Berlin is in the front rank of historical thrillers – Bravo.
A Bloody-Good Read.
