Wedding Station

Starred review from October 1, 2020
Downing's Station series, named after various stops on Berlin's U-Bahn mass-transit system, moves back in time with an evocative prequel that begins with the Reichstag fire in 1933, four weeks after Hitler became chancellor of Germany. Former communist John Russell, the half-English, half-American series hero, is working as a crime reporter for a liberal Berlin newspaper, separated from his wife but hoping to spend as much time as possible with his young son, Paul, before the past catches up with him. As Russell works three stories?the murder of a homosexual prostitute, the disappearance of a fortune-teller, and the hit-and-run death of a genealogist?he finds that most criminal activity in Berlin is either perpetrated or sanctioned by the SA, Hitler's paramilitary wing. With the Nazis moving to close down the liberal press, Russell struggles to write the truth without endangering his paper or his life. ("Once the existence of facts is denied," he says, "everything was a lie . . . but power and the will to use it.") As with many prequels, Wedding Station is ripe with foreshadowing, not only of what is to come for Russell and his loved ones during the war, but also of the larger horrors that are only just beginning. We leave this chillingly resonant novel with the jackboot falling and Russell nursing "a resistance of the heart, one that might someday find expression on the streets."(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

January 1, 2021
As Nazism tightens its grip on Germany, an English crime reporter tackles a handful of juicy stories. Downing resumes the story of John Russell in a seventh Station novel, a prequel set many years before his spy work last seen in Masaryk Station (2013). In February 1933, reporter Russell is on a train when he and other passengers spot a raging fire in the distance. It's the historic Reichstag fire; a moment later, the new chancellor, Adolf Hitler, and his information chief, Joseph Goebbels, emerge from a black Mercedes at the scene. Russell's journalistic investigations play out against a backdrop of escalating violence and oppression. Downing's inclusion of episodes from the rise of Nazism and backstories involving Russell and his expatriate friends adds texture but slows the propulsive pace of the story. The castration and murder of young male prostitute Fredo Ratzel sends Russell in search of the man's missing roommate, Timo Baur. Divorce looms, meanwhile, for Russell and his estranged wife, Ilse, threatening his right to live in Germany. Although their relationship is amicable, Russell worries about Paul, their 6-year-old son. Through Ilse's new partner, Russell meets war veteran Wilhelm Zollitsch, whose rebellious daughter, Lili, has disappeared. Is this the latest kidnapping by the SA, the Nazi paramilitary arm? A third provocative story that Russell is chasing involves the hit-and-run death of Konrad Mommsen, judged an accident by jaded Detective Kuzorra. Gaining access to Mommsen's American widow, Donna, by serving as a translator in her police interview, Russell presses for more information. A litany of sordid crimes that are both a MacGuffin for and a window into a chilling, compelling era.

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