I read the first John Russell novel, Zoo Station for Scoop! Journalists in Fiction, last year, and was hooked. Russell works in Berlin, and travels via Zoo, Stettin, and Silesian Stations through the rise and fall of Hitler - pretty much the same territory inhabited by Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther. Like Kerr, Downing has a convincingly impressive knowledge of wartime Germany, full of acute observations which shed an intriguing, human light on dreadful days.
Russell is an urbane, decent-but-sometimes-sorely-tested freelance reporter for US newspapers gives him access to events historic and mundane. He is also in love with a film star, which offers glimpses into Goebbels' world of propaganda, and has a son who becomes an enthusiastic member of the Hitler Youth.
As it is pretty near impossible to review the plot of the fourth instalment of a closely plotted series without endless spoilers, I'll say no more than it was well worth reading on its arrival from Amazon, and never really landing on the TBR pile.
Potsdam Station, by David Downing (2010), 320pp, Old Street.
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