Bill Mac

Murder Mystery Wouldn't be Published Today, April 13 2008

Kerr's second Bernie Gunther novel probably would not be published today due to his lack of political correctness in establishing its villains. The novel is set in 1939 Berlin and we know that Nazi Germany is about to start the greatest conflagration in history. However, it's not obvious to the characters.

Bernie hates the Nazis but like most Germans either felt powerless to oppose them or chose not to when it might have made a difference. So, now he must serve them as he is blankmailed by Reinhard Heydrich back into a police uniform. Somebody in Berlin is murdering young girls and the Nazis have been unable to solve the case. Can Bernie solve the case while walking through the… Read more

Confused History- Confused Technology, Feb 24 2008

In War Times was my first exposure to Goonan and I was disappointed. Combining WWII with alternate worlds should have been a winner for me but the author got too much wrong. There were historical errors with WWII and then there was the conflation of two different technologies.

First, the biggest historical error with WWII is the assumption that the Blitz continued well into 1944. In fact, large scale daylight raids over England ended in October 1940 with night time raids petering out in 1941. By late 1941 and certainly by 1942 the RAF was taking the fight to the Germans in France. An entire subplot was invalidated by getting the history wrong.

The next major… Read more

It Could Have Been a Great WWII Novel, April 6 2007

I was totally absorbed while listening to the CD version, so why only 3 stars? I left it with the feeling that Robbins just missed it like a deep fly ball that gets caught on the warning track.

What works? The role of the four main characters is a needed exploration of largely uncharted territory in western literature. Robbins has a Cossack tanker, his pilot daughter, an SS staff officer (and spy), and non-ethnic German SS tanker. Any one of these would have been a suitable subject for a novel. What didn't work? By combining them Robbins has diluted the impact that a more focused novel or series of more focused novels would have had.

The most annoying element of… Read more