Wed 17 Mar 2010
DAVID DOWNING – Zoo Station. Soho Press, hardcover, May 2007; trade paperback, May 2008.
This is yet another novel set in Nazi Germany in 1939, as the war clouds thicken, with a protagonist (Anglo-American journalist John Russell), who has lived and worked in Germany for a number of years.
He also has a son from a failed marriage to a German national, and he’s involved in a long-standing relationship with a German actress, which make him unwilling to leave the country and of increasing interest to foreign governments (Russian, British, and American), who want to exploit his privileged situation to their own political ends.
In spite of his reservations, he is unable to resist their demands, with the result that he finds himself operating as a document courier serving more than one foreign government.
I’m not a particular fan of conventional spy fiction, but Downing’s portrayal of life in Germany in the late thirties overrode all my objections. Russell is a complex fictional creation, and his increasingly tense situation is depicted with great skill.
Downing has written at least two sequels, one of which I have on my shelf. I don’t as yet find myself as impressed by his achievement as I was by Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series, but I’m interested enough to be looking forward to see how the series develops in the first sequel.
The John Russell Series —
1. Zoo Station (2007)
2. Silesian Station (2008)
3. Stettin Station (2009)
4. Potsdam Station (2010)
March 17th, 2010 at 3:49 pm
The sources I usually rely on to I keep track of new books coming out have let me down. This is a new author and a new series character to me, one I hadn’t known about before. I’ve just ordered ZOO STATION from Amazon.
The fact is, though, I’m way behind in terms of reading much if any recent spy fiction, and that includes Philip Kerr as well as Alan Furst and the rest of the current big names.
(I did read Furst’s first novel, YOUR DAY IN THE BARREL, back in 1976, but that was a long time ago and nothing like what he writes now. Even he does not like to talk about it.)
— Steve
March 17th, 2010 at 7:34 pm
This does sound like a good series.
Steve
Do catch up with Alan Furst. He’s writing quite the best spy novels currently being produced, with notable highlights KINGDOM OF SHADOWS, THE FOREIGN CORRESPONDENT, and THE SPIES OF WARSAW. His best work has the feel of classic Eric Ambler crossed with CASABLANCA, and while they are technically historical novels in that they all take place around the era of WW II, there is no one in his class currently — including LeCarre.
While he has no series heroes, as in the early Ambler’s certain characters re-occur from book to book.