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Ostland

David Thomas

2013387 pagesabout 6–9 hours
2013
first published
  • 2013Quercus · 436 pages · ENGISBN 9781780877365
  • 2014Charnwood · 474 pages · ENGISBN 9781444820621
  • 2015387 pages · ENGISBN 9781623656966

February 1941, wartime Berlin. Brilliant, idealistic young detective Georg Heuser joins the Murder Squad in the midst of the biggest manhunt the city has ever seen. A serial killer is slaughtering women on S-Bahn trains and leaving their battered bodies by the tracks. Heuser must confront evil eye-to-eye as he helps track down the murderer. July 1959, peacetime West Germany: a pioneering young lawyer, Paula Siebert, is the sole woman in a federal unit investigating men who have committed crimes of unimaginable magnitude and horror. Their leader has just been arrested. His name is Georg Heuser. Siebert is sure of his guilt. But one question haunts her: how could a once decent man have become a sadistic monster? The answer lies in the desolate wastes of the Russian Front, the vast landmass conquered by Hitler's forces...the new empire the Nazis call Ostland. Based on an extraordinary true story, Ostland is a gripping detective thriller, a harrowing account of the Holocaust and a thought-provoking examination of the capacity for sin that lurks in every human soul.

How it feels

MoodSad
AtmosphereBleakNoir

How it reads

Plot intensityEventful

Worth knowing

ViolenceFrequent

When and where

Content notes

  • Warmoderateunreviewed
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