The Bridge of Sighs by Olen Steinhauer

The is my 2nd Steinhauer book, having recently posted an enthusiastic statement on his most recent book The Tourist. As stated then, Steinhauer has a series of post WWII books, set as 1/decade. I decided to go in order and this is the first. I thought the Cold War series would be espionage, but this was a murder mystery set in an un-named slavic Iron Curtain country. It took me maybe 50-75 pages to get going with this book, but once I got all the characters in place in my mind, this was a real page turner; even for his first novel, this showed a talent in the making.

Eastern Europe is struggling with its new identity after WWII. Three years after the war, cities are still bombed out shells, families are starving, gypsies wander the streets, with prostitutes, snitches, and crimes against property rampant. Emil Brod is a 22yo new graduate of the Police Academy wanting to be assigned to homicide and gets assigned to the capital. He lives with his grandparents. His parents were war casualties and his grandparents harbor significant resentment toward the Russians. An informant looking for some favorable treatment tells the police that the government is placing a spy in the ranks of the militia right before Emil is assigned, so when you-know-who joins the homicide squad, he is shunned, harassed, and hazed during his first weeks almost to the point of quitting.

Desperate for his first case, his chief gives has him investigate the murder of a composer of patriotic music who was beaten beyond recognition and his apartment torn apart. Shortly after, the apartment superintendent is found in the same condition, floating in the river. After talking with everyone in the building, Inspector Brod heads for the country to see the wife. Turns out they were separated, soon to be divorced. She is reasonably well off and mostly supported her husbands lifestyle and whoring in the capital. Needless to say Emil takes a shine to the damsel in distress. She has been visited by persons unknown for an item her husband had, but she has no clue. The item is a photograph of a rising party member, soon to be elevated to the politburo.

Brod follows some clues from the capital to Berlin where it turns out the composer led a double life with a lover who runs a transvestite club. This raging queen gives Emil some clues that take Emil to the American sector and an underground bunker of old Nazi records the Allies are cataloguing. Turns out the politburo-to-be member has a dark past, working both sides of the war depending on who was winning. He was an informant for the Gestapo, a hero of Mother Russia killing Germans by the dozens (including an entire squad of teenage German volunteers) and the photo shows him receiving the Iron Cross from a Gestapo Colonel; a photo that the composer was using for extortion. The photo is not good publicity for a rising influential member of the party whom most think is a hero of mother Russia so this murdering war opportunist is trying to cover up tracks and destroy evidence.

Any experienced reader of mysteries can guess the end - the politburo guy ends up on trial and sentenced to death, Brod gets the girl and is accepted by his squad coworkers, grandfather opens up about an atrocity committed on his wife, and the Gestapo Colonel dies the death of a pauper.

In some ways, this was sort of a variation on the same theme of A Few Good Men - a viscous crime, the request by the government for a rookie to investigate and the green recruit solving the crime even though higher-ups now want him off the case. Steinhauer paints a picture of Eastern Europe in the midst of the post-war struggle with Russia emerging as their not-so-benevolent policeman. The desperation of the proles (proletariat) attempting to find their way in the new collectivism is a background that most readers of commercial US mystery should find both fascinating and heartbreaking. What men will do to hide their past and gain political power wells up from items hidden behind a refrigerator to the parlors of future power brokers. If this was life as it really was in the late 1940's, it's a miracle that some semblance of a society emerged.

East Coast Don