The Librarian's Husband's Book Club discussion

Ok....Its Friday. What were your favorites this week? What's good?

Leaving Berlin by Kanon. A very complicated spy story.

A sweeping spy thriller about a city caught between political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation.

Berlin, 1948. Almost four years after the war’s end, the city is still in ruins, a physical wasteland and a political symbol about to rupture. In the West, a defiant, blockaded city is barely surviving on airlifted supplies; in the East, the heady early days of political reconstruction are being undermined by the murky compromises of the Cold War. Espionage, like the black market, is a fact of life. Even culture has become a battleground, with German intellectuals being lured back from exile to add credibility to the competing sectors.

Alex Meier, a young Jewish writer, fled the Nazis for America before the war. But the politics of his youth have now put him in the cross-hairs of the McCarthy witch-hunts. Faced with deportation and the loss of his family, he makes a desperate bargain with the fledgling CIA: he will earn his way back to America by acting as their agent in his native Berlin. But almost from the start things go fatally wrong. A kidnapping misfires, an East German agent is killed, and Alex finds himself a wanted man. Worse, he discovers his real assignment — to spy on the woman he left behind, the only woman he has ever loved. Changing sides in Berlin is as easy as crossing a sector border. But where do we draw the lines of our moral boundaries? At betrayal? Survival? Murder?

Joseph Kanon’s compelling thriller is a love story that brilliantly brings a shadowy period of history vividly to life.

I really enjoyed Blind Spots by Thomas Mullen.

My review: https://www.goodreads.com/review/show...

John wrote: "Leaving Berlin by Kanon. A very complicated spy story.

A sweeping spy thriller about a city caught between political idealism and the harsh realities of Soviet occupation.

Berlin, 1948. Almost f..."



Thank you, I'll request it from our public library. I love stories set in Berlin like "The Moment" by Douglas Kennedy.

While we were in Washington, D. C., for a week, I've read P. D. James' memoir "Time to be in earnest" and thoroughly enjoyed it.
When she wrote this book, she was 10 years older than me right now and I'm in awe how much she still accomplished (like long book signing tours through the US).
She visited many places in the UK that I've been to. In her autobiography she wrote a lot on Dorothy L. Sayers, Ruth Rendell, Jane Austen, Ted Hughes and other British authors.
And you get a good idea about the time in the UK shortly after Princess Di's death.
Highly recommendable!

Just started reading "Man Cave" it's awesome! But extreme horror!!