Rosa: A Novel

by Jonathan Rabb

Overview

November 1918. A socialist revolution is sweeping across Germany, wreaking havoc on war-torn Berlin. Amid the ruin of the city's slums, four women are found dead—all with identical scars on their backs. Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner and his assistant, Hans Fichte, are baffled by the killings, and when another body is discovered, the case takes an ominous and unexpected turn. The fifth victim is none other than Rosa Luxemburg—a leader of the suppressed socialist uprising. Now, the Polpo, political police, are interested in the murders, and the mystery of Rosa's death leads Hoffner into the heart of Weimar's political turmoil, where ideas can be fatal.

A spellbinding historical thriller from the author of The Second Son and Shadow and Light, Rosa is "a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux . . . astonishing" (John Leonard, Harper's Magazine).

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781250008725
Publisher:	Picador
Publication date:	01/03/2012
Series:	Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner , #1
Edition description:	Reprint
Pages:	416
Sales rank:	862,504
Product dimensions:	5.40(w) x 8.40(h) x 1.20(d)

About the Author

Jonathan Rabb is the author of several novels: The Second Son, Shadow and Light, Rosa, The Overseer, and The Book of Q. He lives in Savannah, Georgia, with his wife and twin children.

Editorial Reviews

Tantalizing . . . memorable . . . a tour de force.” —The New York Times Book Review

“Rabb artfully delineates the city as it emerges from war, defeat, and revolution into the shadow of a nascent state of terror.” —The Boston Globe

“Rabb wields a deft and chilling pen..” —Richmond Times-Dispatch

“So richly drawn, so dark, and so compelling.” —Detroit Free Press

“Wonderfully evocative . . . this novel transcends the mystery genre by offering readers a glimpse into the economic and political chaos in Berlin after the war and then transcends politics by giving a pulsatingly detailed account of individual life at a particular moment in history.” —Booklist (starred review)

From the Publisher

"Any fan of historical mystery should read this. ... at its heart, it is a brilliant, real-life mystery transformed into fiction."

Toronto Globe and Mail

"...a novel so richly drawn, so dark and so compelling it reaches into your gut and holds on tight... "

Detroit Free Press

"...Berlin is the chief character here, and Rabb artfully delineates the city as it emerges from war, defeat, and revolution ...."

Boston Globe

"...astonishing...a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux."

Harper's

Based on the obscure four-month-long disappearance of the corpse of Rosa Luxemburg, the "Devil Jewess" Socialist Democrat revolutionary, after her summary execution on January 15, 1919, this brooding, studiously researched fiction noir from Rabb (The Overseer; The Book of Q) imagines the maelstrom of conspiracy and political unrest in post-WWI Germany. For six dreary weeks, starting in early December, veteran Det. Insp. Nikolai Hoffner-along with Hans Fichte, an ambitious 23-year-old detective trainee-has been baffled by the corpses of middle-aged women appearing around Berlin with signature designs carved into their backs. In mid-January, Hoffner is called to see a fifth corpse in an abandoned subway station, and at the morgue, he is shown a sixth body-that of the infamous Rosa Luxemburg. Her corpse has similar markings, but there are subtle differences. These suspicious variations-coupled with the arrogant intervention of the powerful Polpo (political police), who spirit the corpse away to a morgue upstairs-launch Hoffner on a perilous, labyrinthine inquiry. Sometimes the novel's prose is rather tangled and Rabb struggles to get his story told, but subtexts of love, betrayal and a detective at war with his feelings illuminate this gothic tapestry of anti-Semitism and ethnic elitism with its foreshadowing of the Nazi era. Agent, Matt Bialer. (Mar. 1) Forecast: Fans of Philip Kerr and Alan Furst are Rabb's target audience, but his latest may disappoint them. Copyright 2005 Reed Business Information.

Publishers Weekly

In 1918 Berlin, the cops think they've got a serial killer on their hands until the latest victim turns out to be Rosa Luxemburg. The killer's fifth corpse has been mistreated in keeping with the established pattern, complex markings chiseled on its back. This is no ordinary corpse, however, but that of a driving force of the recently crushed socialist revolution. Suddenly, the Polpo (political police) are showing interest. Ever so politely, a territorial struggle has begun, and Kripo (criminal police) Detective Inspector Hoffner soon realizes he's being warned off. But Hoffner, as all his colleagues know, is a bulldog who investigates with a tenacity often amounting to rashness. "It's my case," he tells his wife when she tries to suggest that some warnings might be well meant. "It ends when it ends." Rosa is the obvious key. Was she the random victim of a killer whose bloodlust was up, or is someone using a madman to camouflage a conspiracy? Hoffner becomes a Luxemburg expert. He gets to know her friends, her early life, her writing. He gets to know who loved her, who hated and feared her. It's an investigation that leads him to strange places and disturbing ideas, and when the case finally ends, he must come to terms with grievous loss. As before (The Book of Q, 2001, etc.), Rabb saps the strength of a perfectly good story by taking too long to tell it.

Kirkus Reviews