Then We Take Berlin

Starred review from July 1, 2013
This intelligent first in a new series from Lawton (A Lily of the Field and six other Inspector Troy thrillers) opens on the eve of President Kennedy’s 1963 Berlin visit, but the real meat lies in the compelling backstory of John Wilford Holderness, an East London Cockney who joins the RAF in 1946. Aircraftman Wilderness (or “Joe Wilderness,” as he prefers to be called) is cheeky to the point of risking court-martial, but an RAF colonel spots Joe’s potential, sends him to Cambridge, and makes him a spy. Joe is posted in 1947 to Berlin, where he tries to identify former Nazis (while making a packet in black market trading), and falls in love with Nell Burkhardt, a German woman who by 1963 is an aide to Mayor Willi Brandt. Despite a relatively weak subplot about the effort to smuggle a woman out of East Berlin, this is a wonderfully written and generally wise book that will thrill readers with an interest in WWII and the early Cold War era.

Starred review from September 15, 2013
A dangerous assignment in East Berlin is fraught with complex memories from postwar Europe. London, 1963. John Holderness gets a late call from expansive Frank Spoleto, a big New York advertising exec, offering him a well-paying job. So close is their bond that Holderness, known as Wilderness due to his raucous past, agrees without further details. After reminiscing with Wilderness about their days together at MI6, Frank asks him to get his partner Steve's beloved Aunt Hannah out of East Berlin. A flashback to 1941 presents Holderness at 13. His mother, Lily, has just been killed in a pub by a Luftwaffe air raid. His violent father, Harry, is away in the service, so Wilderness moves in with his granddad Abner and his sexy, much younger wife, Merle. Abner and Wilderness make a decent living as burglars. When Abner dies after a big job, Merle helps Wilderness avoid prosecution. As the war draws to a close, Wilderness is called up to serve. Contemptuous of authority, he barely escapes court martial, rescued only by his impressive scores on intelligence tests. Fast tracked into the spy game, he uses his criminal skills to avenge himself on colleagues who irk him. Then he falls in love with Nell, a young German woman deeply scarred by the war. And when he undertakes Frank's caper nearly 20 years later, whom should he encounter but...? A wonderfully complex and nuanced thriller, first in a new series, by the creator of Inspector Troy (A Lily of the Field, 2010, etc.).

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Starred review from August 1, 2013
Lawton's superb A Lily of the Field (2010) moved from the 1930s through the immediate postwar era, mainly in London. Here he focuses again on that richly atmospheric wake-of-the-war period, both in London and in Berlin. Joe Wilderness, an East End cat burglar who learned his trade from his grandfather, is drafted into the RAF in 1946 and then quickly taken under the wing of intelligence officer Lieutenant Colonel Burne-Jones, who sees Joe's special talents as extremely handy in the coming Cold War. That's fine with Joe, but, meanwhile, Berlin appears to him as the ultimate candy storea black marketeer's wet dreamand he sets out with another Englishman, an American officer, and a major in the Russian NKVD, to make an illicit fortune from the rubble of the once-grand German city. Their reach exceeds their grasp, of course, and after the scam comes crashing down, Joe is rescued by Burne-Jones but not before losing the love of his life, a German girl, Nell, whose weary idealism stands in sharp opposition to Joe's cheerful larceny. Bump forward 15 years: Joe is reunited with the American officer, who has another scheme: this time the plan involves smuggling people, not dry goods. Joe goes along, hoping mainly to reconnect with Nell, now a West German diplomat helping to plan President Kennedy's Berlin visit. Lawton captures both the immediate postwar and midcentury landscapes perfectly, stirring elements of Graham Greene, John le Carr', and the great Ross Thomas' too-little-known McCorkle and Padillo novels into a superbly well-built Cold War cocktailbracing, deliriously delicious, but carrying the slightly bitter aftertaste of dreams gone bad.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2013, American Library Association.)