March Violets

March Violets, set in 1936, is the first book in Philip Kerr's Berlin Noir series. The plots of the best writers of detective fiction, Chandler and Ross Macdonald for two, tend to lose me about halfway through, but the story isn't really the point. Like those predecessors, Kerr weaves a tangled tale while excelling in atmosphere, characterizations, and similes -- although some of the similes are head-scratchers. The whiff of anxiety and menace in Hitler's Berlin as the Olympics approach is ever-present, reinforced by Kerr's careful detail work on places, people, and society.