Potsdam Station - David Downing

There seem to be countless novels on the market dealing with 'good' people involved in Nazi Germany. Of the cuff, for example, there is Alan Furst, Volker Kutscher and, of course, Philip Kerr. Then there is the sub genre (see C J Sansom, Len Deighton and Robert Harris) of what-if-the-Nazis-had-won fiction. Downing belongs to the former school and classes with Furst in the degree of detail. I would not have classed him with Furst in literary achievement, having previously read the first of his second series, Jack of Spies (also reviewed on this blog), which is set in the lead-up to World War I. Potsdam Station is the fourth in his series featuring John Russell and Effi Koenen and went a long way to changing my mind.

Russell is an Anglo-American journalist and spy. He is also a somewhat disillusioned communist. Effi is his girlfriend, a former German movie star, now living undercover and helping to get Jews out of Berlin. At the start of this novel Russell and Effi have been apart for almost four years. Russell is trying to tag along with the Soviet Army as it closes in on Berlin in the final days of the war. He also wants to find his son Paul, who is serving with what remains of the German army.

Russell succeeds, thanks to his old communist associates. He is sent ahead of the army as part of team trying to recover as much information about the Nazi A-bomb project as humanly possible. Meanwhile Effi is entrusted with an 8 year-old Jewish girl and Paul becomes detached from his unit. Thus the three key participants move through the increasingly battered city, slowly closing in on one another. It is a fairly common storyline but Downing's command of detail lifts the story well above the ordinary. His writing here is better than I remember in Jack of Spies. Perhaps it is simply a matter of him having more affinity with World War II.

Whilst I didn't hate Jack of Spies, I couldn't recommend it. I have no such problem with Potsdam Station, which is a cracking read. I have an ebook of the first in the series, Zoo Station, which I still haven't read. Must crack on.

Jack of Spies - David Downing

Downing is the author of six espionage novels featuring John Russell and Effi Koenen set in Nazi Germany.  Jack of Spies (1913) is the first of a new series featuring gentleman spy Jack McColl in the lead-up to and during World War I.  This first volume takes us from 1913 to immediately after the outbreak of war.

There is a great deal to recommend the book and much to look forward to in the series.  The problem is, it is entirely an introduction to the series and does not stand as a novel in its own right.  First mistake: Jack has met his love interest before the novel begins, so we are denied any real character or narrative development there.  Secondly, the antagonist (who is all-too-clearly planned to continue through the series) is nowhere near antagonistic enough; indeed he serves very little purpose.  Instead of having the single enclosed world of the first series, Jack is all over the world in the space of a few months (China, America, Mexico, London, Ireland) and seriously wounded twice with no significant recuperation or impairment despite the constrained timescale.  Thus we have no opportunity for meaningful characterisation outside Jack himself.  The story is patchy and somewhat pointless.  The description of setting is good and convincing but I am left with no idea what anyone looks like.

I have an unread ebook of Zoo Station, which I look forward to reading, and will certainly read the next McColl novel.  But they had better be more satisfactory novels in their own right than Jack of Spies for me to stay onboard.

As a footnote, this is a very well made physical artifact of a book from Old St, a publisher I haven't come across before.