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Ostland (2013)

by David Thomas(Favorite Author)

4.05 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1780877366 (ISBN13: 9781780877365)

languge

English

genre

History & Biography

publisher

Quercus

review 1: This is a harrowing book. It is more a historical fiction novel than a crime thriller as, apart from the opening chapters where a serial killer is being sought in pre-war Berlin, the book as a whole doesn't really have a criminal or murderer being pursued or a mystery being unwound in any traditional sense. The heroic detective in the early part of the book ends up as an SS officer overseeing with others the 'Final Solution' to the Jewish Problem' in Minsk in Eastern Europe. The story flashes back and forth between the wartime 'Ostland' and early 60s West Germany where several former SS officers including the main protagonist, Georg Heuser, are being tried for their wartime crimes. The book is really a thoughtful and profound examination of how potentially good human being... mores could (or can) descend to the basest and most depraved depths of evil, murdering and torturing thousands of innocents because ' they were only obeying orders'. Beautifully written and very gripping but very, very bleak.
review 2: Disappointing. Leaving aside the hype that attends a books such as this -"...investigating war crimes of unimaginable magnitude..." - I expected to see read some exploration of what turns 'a good man into a monster' but it wasn't forthcoming. Certainly the descriptions and accounting of what took place in Ostland are convincing enough, but Georg Heuser didn't emerge for me as anything more than 'one day I was a police officer and the next I was an agent of genocide'. What might have provoked the change of career simply isn't got to grips with. Is the book overly ambitious in the first place and some what he victim of its own hype (and publishing gush) perhaps? Can't recommend. less

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