Tears of Innocence

by Bill Rapp

"In the autumn of 1945 Karl Baier‚ a young American military officer‚ arrives in a devastated Berlin‚ the once mighty capital of the Third Reich. His to hunt down‚ debrief‚ and‚ in some cases‚ resettle German scientists who helped build the German war machine.



He is not alone‚ however‚ as America's allies during the war have become competitors in the search for Germany's scientific and industrial elite. Baier soon finds himself romantically involved with a local woman whose husband disappeared on the eastern front‚ a woman whose husband shares Baier's name. The young American agrees to help find news of her husband's fate‚ which she uses to draw him into a story of deceit‚ romance‚ and missing treasure. Soon Baier becomes the hunted as much as the hunter. Baier's quest takes him from the ruins of Berlin to Greece‚ Bavaria‚ and Lisbon‚ the heart of European espionage and main escape route during the war‚ as he searches for answers to a mystery that stretches back into the German occupation‚ the chaotic final days of the war‚ and into an uncertain future. Baier will have to learn who his true friends are‚ whom he can trust‚ and whether it is safe to love a woman whose history he can only begin to understand.



Tears of Innocence is a fast-paced thriller set in a time when Karl Baier and his country must face up to the challenges of their new role in an uncertain postwar world.

"

251 pages, Hardcover

First published February 18, 2015

About the author

I may have spent the last thirty-five years as a diplomat/analyst working for the federal government, but I began my adult life as a professional historian. After graduating from the University of Notre Dame with a B.A. in History and German, I received my M.A. in European History from the University of Toronto and a Ph.D. from Vanderbilt University. I taught history at Iowa State University for one year but then decided to shift my efforts to something less settled and moved to Washington, D.C. That career has taken me to Berlin, Ottawa, Baghdad, and now London, with long stays in Washington in between.

Through it all I never lost my love of history and literature, especially crime fiction, which I often read to take a break from all the history books I had to study for my course work, thesis, and dissertation. Fortunately, I was able to apply that affinity for our past throughout my career with the government, while it also inspired much of my writing. You can see that, for example, in the Berlin novels, especially Tears of Innocence, as I spent several years there as a student and later as a diplomat during the fall of the Wall and Germany's reunification. Even the Naperville private detective series (Angel in Black, A Pale Rain, and Burning Altars) draws on the local history and development of the Chicago area, just as Raymond Chandler and Ross MacDonald--the two paragons of American detective fiction, in my eyes--did in their novels and stories set in southern California.

Reviews

[Humphrey Hawksley]

Bill Rapp gives us a superb and tense story of Europe just after the Second World War. His drawing of relationships between the Russians, British and Americans, the corruption, the moral choices, the lawlessness are stunning. This is Alan Furst meets Philip Kerr.