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Stasi Child (Karin Müller, #1)

David Young

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Sep 27, 2021 Tony rated it liked it · review of another edition

Shelves: crime, novels, setting-europe

I'm always keen to read mystery and crime fiction set in places and times unfamiliar to me, and so happily picked up this first in a six-book series set in mid-1970s East Germany. Like a lot of debuts, it's a little clunky and rough round the edges, with some improbable aspects, but just about gets the job done. The story opens with a dead teenage girl lying in snow near the border wall in East Berlin. Normally, this would fall under the jurisdiction of the Border Guard, but Kriminalpolizei homi I'm always keen to read mystery and crime fiction set in places and times unfamiliar to me, and so happily picked up this first in a six-book series set in mid-1970s East Germany. Like a lot of debuts, it's a little clunky and rough round the edges, with some improbable aspects, but just about gets the job done. The story opens with a dead teenage girl lying in snow near the border wall in East Berlin. Normally, this would fall under the jurisdiction of the Border Guard, but Kriminalpolizei homicide detective Karin Müller is called to the scene and instructed by a Stasi officer that she's to take charge. However it's all quite odd, because all she's supposed to do is identify the victim and no more. But in East Germany, as in all repressive regimes, all crime is political, and one does what the state security forces tell you to.

Müller and her assistant (whom she's at least partially attracted to in a running subplot) and a chirpy medical examiner then prowl for clues and answers, struggling to operate within the Stasi-delimited parameters. However, there are also chapters flashing back nine months, when Müller's husband was sent to teach at a children's prison/work camp on the coast. He'd been dabbling in pro-Western politics and was sent there as punishment. Naturally, this backstory ends up connecting to the dead girl. It's a bit annoying, because the husband's presence at the school is effectively a coincidence, and isn't necessary for the plot. The identity of the nasty prison boss ends up being another annoying coincidence, again, not integral to the plot.

The book does a decent job at depicting the drab and oppressive setting of the DDR, with lots of details about cars, fashion, and the use of doctored photos and a brief trip into West Berlin for contrast. Things pick up when another corpse is found in the mountains, and eventually the reason for the Stasi officer's subtle instructions start to become clear as the plot veers toward the expected corruption-at-the-highest-levels denouement. There's an action-packed climax that gets a little too over-the-top for my taste, but I'll try the next in the series to see if the plotting is a little tighter. ...more

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