Zoo Station
A
John Russell Mystery
David
Downing
Soho Press (Trade Paperback)
ISBN-10: 1-56947-495-8 (1569474958)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-495-2 (9781569474952)
Publication Date: May 2008
List Price: $14.00
Synopsis (from
the publisher): By 1939, Anglo-American journalist John Russell has
spent over a decade in Berlin, where his son lives with his mother. He
writes human-interest pieces for British and American papers, avoiding
the investigative journalism that could get him deported. But as World
War II approaches, he faces having to leave his son as well as his
girlfriend of several years, a beautiful German starlet.
When an acquaintance from his old communist days approaches him to do
some work for the Soviets, Russell is reluctant, but he is unable to
resist the offer. He becomes involved in other dangerous activities,
helping a Jewish family and a determined young American reporter. When
the British and the Nazis notice his involvement with the Soviets,
Russell is dragged into the murky world of warring intelligence
services.
Review:
Although born at sea of an American mother and an English father,
40-year-old freelance journalist John Russell has been living in
Germany for almost fourteen years, long enough to have married, and
divorced a German wife, Ilse, to have had a soon-to-be 12-year-old son,
Paul, and to have found a long-time film actress girlfriend,
32-two-year-old Effi Koenen, an acquaintance of Lenni
Riefenstahl’s. They all live in the Berlin of 1939, but far from
happily ever after, as war clouds gather and Nazi thugs scorch the
lives of Russell’s Jewish friends, the Wiesners. David
Downing’s story of journalist Russell’s struggles to rescue
the Wiesners from annihilation and save his own skin in the process is
a compelling mix of murderous cover-ups, espionage and
counter-espionage, historical facts, and one man’s courageous
determination to rebel against evil incarnate.
On the surface Downing’s novel is a straightforward enough story
about a journalist caught unwittingly in a sticky web of espionage. For
a substantial sum of Reichsmarks freelancer Russell agrees to a
proposal from a long ago acquaintance in the Russian Communist Party to
write "a series of articles about positive aspects of the Nazi
regime” – a slippery slope for Russell given his
observations of the kindertransport of Jewish children, the pillaging
of their homes and the fatal beatings of their relatives in the
Sachsenhausen Concentration Camp and Re-Educational Facility.
Conflicted between being a well-paid propagandist for the Russian
party’s purposes and what he sees around him, Russell questions
how to maintain his integrity as he journeys back and forth from
Berlin’s Zoo Station to clandestine meetings outside of Germany
with his Russian contacts. Threatened with exposure to the Germans, he
agrees to spy for the Russians while secretly spying for the British as
well in exchange for visas for the Wiesners after their father, a
medical doctor, has been arrested on false charges and beaten to death.
To increase the danger to his own safety he partners with an American
journalist, Tyler McKinley, who is researching an expose of the
Nazis’ plans to euthanize mentally slow children. When McKinley
dies at the Zoo Station in a murder covered up as a suicide, Russell
inherits the documents for the story and the lead to a critical letter
proving the allegations. His troubles compound as he balances his
espionage efforts between giving the Russians what they want, providing
the British with worthwhile information, getting the Wiesners’
visas, driving the hot-tempered 18-year-old Albert Wiesner out of town
and escorting the widowed mother, Eva, and her two teen aged daughters
to the relative safety of the Zoo Station for their trip to freedom on
“the long train as it rumbled across the iron bridge and leaned
into the long curve beyond.”
Although not on the macro scale of Schindler’s List,
Downing’s novel is nevertheless a gripping story of bravery and,
at times, crackling suspense, especially during interviews with the
Gestapo and searches by customs agents. The references to the personas
of the day and the landmark settings of the cities and countries bring
the story alive and the summaries of speeches and historical documents
reinforce the chilling authenticity of the Nazi controlled state of
pre-war Germany. Russell’s inner and external conflicts are well
depicted as are his relationships with his son, his girlfriend, and the
Russian, German and British officials he must deal with in his trade of
documents for money and lives. Even the Zoo Station comes alive as the
focal point for much of the story as the site of the alleged suicide
and the repository for a suitcase with a hidden compartment, a piece of
luggage that in the end leads ironically to Russell making a major
contribution to a “wedding present” for a customs official
with an agenda of his own.
Special thanks to M. Wayne Cunningham (mw_cunningham@telus.net) for contributing his review of Zoo Station and to Soho Press for providing the trade paperback edition of the book for review.
Review
Copyright © 2008 — M. Wayne Cunningham
— All
Rights Reserved
Reprinted with Permission
Mysteries in this series ...
Zoo
Station
Soho Press (Hardcover), May 2007
ISBN-10: 1-56947-454-0 (1569474540)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-454-9 (9781569474549)
Silesian
Station
Soho Press (Hardcover), May 2008
ISBN-10: 1-56947-494-X (156947494X)
ISBN-13: 978-1-56947-494-5 (9781569474945)
Omnimystery keywords for Zoo Station ...
Location(s) referenced: Berlin, Germany.
