Stasi Vice
An East German Crime Novel

I very much wanted to like this novel and this author, having just spent a week visiting Berlin. Hertzberg almost pulls it off but - as another reviewer has suggested - it’s full of cliches and it feels like it’s written by a Western author who hated East Germany. Which I think it was. The constant......more

A limp story partly salvaged by basis within East Germany Rather casual plot with underformed characters. Too much emphasis on details of travel. There is a twist, but it neither surprised nor excited me.......more

Easy-reading, entertaining East German mystery Karl Peter Reim is the hard-boiled detective in the East German secret police, called the Stasi. He is charged (somewhat inexplicably) by his boss to find out what people are saying about an affair the boss is having. Reim reluctantly sets out on the ca......more

If you enjoy Deutschland 83/86 chances are you will take to this. While Deutschland 83/86 were often engaged overseas and in West Germany this focuses on more local East German matters, but still exploring a system the reader knows is doomed but the participants do not (bar the end of D86). But throu......more

Stasi Vice is a decent thriller set in East Berlin 1983. Reim (the hero - main character) sets off on what can only be described as a 'Cook's tour' of the city on a mysterious mission ordered by his boss, a Stasi major. It's fairly pedestrian for most of the time with much repetition but, as the end......more