Publisher's Weekly Review
Set in Nazi Germany, Steiner's taut sequel to 2019's The Good Cop finds Willi Geismeier no longer a member of the Munich police force. Because he implicated a high-ranking Nazi official, one of Hitler's favorites, in a string of killings and rapes, he's on the run from his former colleagues, the SS, and the Gestapo. Willi takes refuge with an old school friend in the Bavarian Forest, but he comes out of hiding after his bar manager friend, Lola Zeff, is attacked and injured by a stranger on a Munich street. Despite his own fugitive status, Willi investigates, only to suspect that the assault is the work of a serial killer being hunted by his former partner on the force. Scenes from the murderer's perspective ratchet up the tension. The plot is more of a cat-and-mouse game than a whodunit, but Steiner maintains suspense even after the identity of Lola's assailant is revealed. Though the challenges of searching for the truth amid the brutality of the Nazi regime aren't conveyed at the same level as Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels, this still satisfies. Agent: John Silbersack, Bent Agency. (June)
Kirkus Review
A former police detective hunts a serial rapist in Nazi Germany. Now that he's identified high-ranking Nazi official Otto Bruck as a serial murderer and rapist in The Good Cop (2019), Munich detective Willi Geismeier has been forced to leave his police job and his home. Still feeling responsible for finding the man who attacked Lola Zeff, he returns secretly to Munich, living under the alias Karl Juncker, to find him. As he does his best to lie low, rising Nazi aggression and internal turmoil repeatedly put Willi's quest on the back burner. Steiner's brief chapters create a tapestry of Germany under the rising influence of the Gestapo. Ambitious storm trooper Lt. Walter Kempf arrests fellow Nazi Ernst Röhm for being homosexual as part of a project called Operation Hummingbird. DS Hermann Gruber worries that his wife, Mitzi, is in danger because of her Jewish heritage. Storm trooper Heinz Schleiffer is surprised to find his adult son, Tomas, at a show of "degenerate art" put on by Joseph Goebbels and disturbed to learn that Tomas opposes the Nazis. The intellectual Reinhard Pabst is lukewarm about the Nazi cause but attracted by the power his allegiance to the Führer provides. Willi does have his allies: Lola is anxious for closure, and his landlady, Frau Schimmel, informs him of visitors who come looking for him. His investigation gains traction with the discovery of more victims. All too often, though, Steiner's cursory attempts to provide a more complex depiction of Germany in this era distract attention from Willi's pursuit of a serial killer. A brisk if uneven thriller peppered with historical detail about Nazi Germany. Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Booklist Review
How does Steiner do it? He writes mostly plain declarative sentences that march along obediently, trying only to do their job. No literary flourish, no look-at-that! sequences. But it's near impossible to put down this story of former German policeman Willi Geismeier, former because his detection work in the Hitler era identified a high-ranking Nazi as a rapist and murderer. Willi's working as a bicycle repairman now, in the late 1930s, when the Reich is making no bones about its ugliness, and a new Ripper-style killer is at work. The bloodhound in Willi can't resist, and, as he works, we see one of the keys to the success of Steiner's deadpan style: his curiosity--a sort of sympathetic bond--about everybody Willi encounters. The supporting players are scene-stealers, like the aged Jewish woman who welcomes a fatal diagnosis because she can die in her own bed instead of becoming a victim of the coming horror, or the retired burglar overjoyed because Willi frees him from steady employment. Even the killer gets a close look: "Doing violence liberated him from his weak, ineffectual self. It felt good. This was power. Destruction was power."
Library Journal Review
Former Munich detective Willi Geimeiser wrecked his career by exposing a high-ranking Nazi official as a murderer and is now hiding in the Bavarian forest. But not for long: when his friend Lola is attacked, he returns to Munich in disguise to pursue a serial killer. Geimeister's series launch, The Good Cop, received an LJ-starred review.
