The Silent Death

MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN

‘[Kutscher's] trick is ingenious...He's created a portrait of an era through the lens of genre fiction.’ -The New York Times

Following international bestseller Babylon Berlin, Volker Kutscher takes us back to Berlin in the second Gereon Rath Mystery. In The Silent Death, Inspector Rath investigates crime and corruption in the shadow of the growing Nazi movement.

March 1930. The film industry is changing rapidly, with talking films taking over the silver screen.

Celebrated actress Betty Winter is killed when a spotlight falls on her during the filming of a new talkie.

It looks like an unfortunate accident at first, but Gereon Rath finds clues that other detectives miss, all suggesting it was murder.

The prime suspect is a runaway lighting technician, but the Rath’s investigation points to a different explanation. Soon he is out on his own as tensions rise between rival film studios, and violence breaks out between Communists and Nazis.

It’s no time for distractions, so naturally that’s when his father asks him for help with a case of blackmail, and ex-girlfriend Charly Ritter reaches out to talk about getting back together.

With personal and professional destruction on the line, Rath will find himself fighting for the truth and his own life as all around him political factions fight for the soul of Berlin.

About the Gereon Rath Mysteries

1930s Berlin is a hotbed of vice and organised crime. When Inspector Gereon Rath leaves Cologne to join Berlin’s murder squad, he cannot begin to imagine the brutality and complexity of the world he is stepping into as communists and Nazis struggle for power.

Volker Kutscher was born in 1962 in Lindlar, West Germany. He is the author of the enormously successful Gereon Rath crime series which, in addition to compelling narrative, is notable for its scrupulous accuracy on Germany in the years between its beginning in 1927 and the approach to the Second World War.

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