Fingertip Search

This novel is set in communist East Germany, the German Democratic Republic or the DDR as it was known and in the mid 1970s when these novels are set and police and security organisations were abundant to say the least. Most criminal investigations were conducted by the Volkspolizie (People's Police) or the Vopos as they were commonly known. Within this organisation there was a CID division known as the Kriminalpolizei or Kripo for short. The citizens were well protected it seems, but in case that isn't enough a more powerful body oversees them all.

The notorious Ministry for State Security is far better known in the West as the Stasi and they would investigate any crime thought to have significant political overtones and they were staffed with their own CID and forensic teams. As David Young makes clear there were very few cases where both organisations worked together on the same team, but this murder case is one of them.

A young girl has been found murdered in a cemetery very near the Berlin Wall or the Anti-Facist Protection Barrier as it is rather amusingly known in the DDR. She has bullet wounds in her back and a face so mutilated that identification is impossible. The position of the body seems to show the curious fact that she was escaping from the West to the East and had been shot by West German border guards.

Two Kripo detectives are called to the scene, Oberleutnant Karin Müller and her assistant Unterleutnant Werner Tilsner. Much to their dismay several Stasi officers are already in attendance under the command of Oberstleutnant Klaus Jäger and so begins the uneasy cooperation between the two departments.

The novel is very well plotted, the solution satisfying, and the quality of the writing is such that you are soon invested in the labyrinthine workings of the state as Karin and Werner attempt to overcome all of the obstacles put in their way, usually by fellow officers.

David Young obviously knows the DDR very well indeed and one of the pleasures of this book is learning about everyday life in this strict communist regime. A lesser writer would have made Karin secretly yearn for the West but she is a true believer in the worker's state and when the case takes her across the Wall for the first time her disdain of the luxurious cars and the fripperies in a big department store made me like her all the more.

I was very pleased that she drives a Wartburg rather than a Trabant, which was one of the true workhorses of the DDR. A very good friend of mine had one in the 1980s and, believe me, a long trip on the motorway was something I won't forget in a hurry.

Available at Amazon in paperback at £5.75 or as a Kindle download for £2.48.

Reviews

Idle Thoughts