When I am not busy with long lists of books in various languages, I prefer to take some time off reading German crime novels. At a certain extent, the topics and characters featured in crime stories reflect some real-life situations from the countries they are set in, hence my interest. Also, the choice of topics featured to mirror the crime-related episodes happening in the non-fictional reality.
My choice for the last weekend of German krimi - a genre that needs definitely more international praise and attention - was a debut novel of the Berliner Morgenpost journalist Jens Anker, Schatten über Moabit, in my own translation - Shadows over Moabit.
Moabit which is slowly slowly getting through its own gentrification phase, is known as the law&order area of Berlin, with an important prison and the criminal court being situated here. The criminal court that I had the chance to visit a couple of years back is an example of ´Einschüchterungarchitektur' - ´intimidating architecture´. Once someone enters such buildings he or she may feel instantly intimidated and compelled to submit to the act of justice.
Most of the action of the book is taking place at this criminal court, where a proeminent prosecutor apparently committed suicide. A young apprentice working there is decided to shed light on the case, trying to decipher first the three words that were found on a piece of paper in the possession of the victim. The investigation will take the reader through the maze of pharma industry and unexpected details provided by the forensic medicine.
The book has a relatively important part - out of around 200 pages - dedicated to various procedural aspects, which may be a German thing but even for the native reader does not bring too much - especially in this case - except the very typical complaining attitude about everything that does not change anything, it just express a permanent feeling.
The proceedings as such, weren´t impressive either, as although the data collection was right, the interpretation was spectacular, maybe too spectacular to be really reliable from the logical point of view. Also, the character development is mostly simplistic and does not go beyond the basic introduction: a name, a profession, but unclear what those people want, think, are motivated to do and hide.
Therefore, despite my all admiration for German krimi, this time the choice was not impressive and Schatten über Moabit will remain in my reading records as just another book that I´ve chose randomly from my local library but was far from being a lucky one.
Rating: 2 stars
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