All Traitors' Day: The sixth Otto Fischer novel

Otto Fischer #6

by Jim McDermott

June 1953: three months after the death of Josef Stalin, a succession struggle paralyses the Kremlin.
Meanwhile, the Soviet Union's fledgling client-state East Germany is having a disastrous year, its economic master plan failing so badly that even good socialists are wondering if the rush to socialism is a mistake. In normal times they could look to Moscow for help and guidance, but all they get are distracted words of caution.
On 17 June, the previous day's isolated outbreaks of industrial unrest grow into a nation-wide outpouring of grievance. Hundreds of thousands of workers strike, and as the day goes on, ordinary citizens join them, taking to the streets to demand free elections and an end to one-party rule. There are too few police and State Security forces to restore order, and they hardly make the attempt. The longer the unrest continues, the more likely it is that the Red Army will intervene, brutally.
On this fateful day, two fugitives come to West Berlin, each hoping to influence a nation's future. To succeed, they need help – help that doesn’t ask questions or fear to take risks. It asks a hell of lot, that sort of help, and Otto Fischer, clock-repairer of Lichterfelde, wishes very much that they’d looked elsewhere.

Genres: Historical Fiction, Fiction

400 pages, Kindle Edition

Published August 23, 2018

About the author

For some reason Goodreads have pinned me as a New Hampshire man. No idea why. Actually a Lancashire man, b&b. No Yankee genes whatsoever.

Reviews

[Mieczyslaw Kasprzyk · Rating 5 out of 5]

I'm disappointed to read certain reviews of this book complaining that it focusses too much on the politics of the time. How far we have come from those days when politics and ideologies drove a world recovering from one catastrophic blood-letting and murder, and looked like another was just on the horizon.
I was too young to remember any of the events dealt with in the post-war series of Otto Fischer books but they still drove our history and our attitudes thirty years after the events covered here. I was on a train going to Poland in '64 when we stopped at a station in Berlin. I remember the East German guards on the platform, standing, blocking the doors, submachine guns at the shoulder. I remember seeing the Wall being built - they were in the second stage of reinforcing the border then, and I remember, as the train pulled out of Berlin and across the plains to Poland, cattle truck after cattle truck filled with Soviet soldiers, laughing, singing... one was, like a cliche, playing a balalaika.
It is so easy, for those of us living in comfort and peace and divorced from the concerns of the world, to forget that there are people waking up today and doing their bit to resist and take part in the struggle for freedom and liberties we take for granted. It is so easy for us to not truly understand the knife edge some people live on; stone throwing, rubber bullets, real bullets, tanks.
Jim McDermott does his best to give us a feel of how everyday all that can be, albeit on one occasion, probably stage-managed by the powers-that-be in order to achieve ends many of the ordinary people wouldn't even begin to understand. McDermott takes us to those uncertain days just after Stalin's death, when the world held its breath awaiting what would develop... who would take charge? What would they do? And there, there on the border between two worlds... trouble is brewing.
We are taken on a Cooke's Tour through machinations and manipulations, and friends looking out for each other, and a sort of chaos that looks quite calm sometimes... because that, I'm assured, is what happens on any battlefield, in any potentially world-changing situation. Jim McDermott does all this with a degree of humour but also tension... at times this is really gripping.
If I have one complaint then it's about the cheapness of Amazon when it came to publishing this book; poor proof-reading... very poor... but then, there's no profit in doing something carefully. Thank God that McDermott writes well to make up for Amazon's money-grubbing universe.

[Vidar · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is the sixth Otto Fisher novel. We are in Germany and Berlin in June 1953. Stalin has been dead for almost three months, and the succession struggle continues, leaving the local East German communist regime in a vacuum. The new state has had a disastrous year. Thousands flee westwards, mini-purges have alienated everyone but the Party faithful and the economic master plan is going so badly that even good socialists are wondering if the rush to socialism is a mistake.

The plot in the book coincides with the East German chaos and unrest that emerges on the 17 June. There are isolated outbreaks of industrial unrest that grow into a nation-wide outpouring of grievances. Hundreds of thousands of workers strike and march on the seats of power, and as the day goes on, ordinary citizens join them, demanding free elections and an end to one-party rule. Police and the Stasi are too few to take back the streets, and hardly try. The longer the unrest continues, the more likely it becomes that the Red Army will intervene. On this day Otto Fisher is going back to East Berlin, to find the wife of his friend Freddie Holleman, both are now on the run from East Germany

[Peter Franklin · Rating 5 out of 5]

Excellent further story of Otto. Well developed and written, highly recommended

[jon reed · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read

Again another very good read. The characters from the series of Otto Fischer books just get better each time can't wait to read the seventh.

[Gary Boire · Rating 3 out of 5]

This instalment in the series is disappointing on a number of fronts. Although the writing is as fine as usual and the plot itself is suspenseful and full of unexpected twists and turns, the sheer amount of historical background filler tends to overshadow the plot development throughout. The author’s historical research, in other words, shoulders its way to the forefront at the expense of the plot. And the result is a bloated book that sags as it proceeds. A good edit would have Improved this book immensely. And on the topic of editing one of my biggest bugbears with the Otto series is the incredibly sloppy proofing of the final text. The kindle version is full of typos, grammatical errors, dropped words, and so on. This is a shame as McDermott is a fine writer who deserves much much better from his editors.

[Clare · Rating 3 out of 5]

I didn't feel as engaged with the characters in this episode of the series as earlier books. It's set in Berlin at an interesting time in the young GDR, before the Wall, when there were demonstrations against the leadership and tensions between the former Allied powers were very high. But I felt that in the author's desire to delve into the history and politics the characters were rather cursorily described, and if this had been the first one of the series I picked up I might not have persevered. There were too many separate story strands for much of the book until they started to draw together when things became more gripping towards the end. But it did give me a sense of the uncertainties of the early 1950s and how things could have gone very differently.

[Leonie · Rating 4 out of 5]

Freddie, Berlin riots, Otto as clock-mender, Russians, CIA, Stasi, politics, danger - and a WTF ending. Another normal Otto adventure then.