by Joseph Kanon
First published 2015
Alex Meier stands in the rubble of 1948 Berlin, four years after the war ended. The Jewish writer fled Nazi Germany for America before the conflict began, but McCarthyist politics now threaten his new life. The CIA offers him a deal: spy for them in divided Berlin and earn his way back to American citizenship. Alex accepts, desperate to save his family from deportation. The city splits between West and East, surviving on airlifted supplies while espionage thrives like the black market. His first mission goes wrong immediately. A kidnapping fails, an East German agent dies, and Alex becomes a hunted man. Then he discovers his true assignment: surveillance of the woman he abandoned years ago, the only woman he ever loved. In Cold War Berlin, crossing from one sector to another takes seconds. Alex must decide where his moral boundaries lie as betrayal, survival, and murder converge in a city caught between idealism and Soviet occupation.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, espionage, political-thriller
Vibes: atmospheric, dark, suspenseful, thought-provoking
Tropes: enemies-to-lovers, moral-dilemma
Setting: Berlin, America
Period: 1948, Cold War
371 pages · Hardcover · Atria Books
Content warnings: death, violence