This is the follow up to "The Good Cop", which featured Munich police detective Willi Geismeier and gave an account of the rise of Nazism in the 1920's as seen through the eyes of a German police officer. After putting his life at risk by exposing a high-ranking Nazi as a murderer, Willi is on an SS list as an enemy of the Reich and has had to change his identity. But, when his childhood friend Lola is attacked in the street, he returns to Munich determined to find the culprit. Using the name Karl Juncker, Willi begins his investigation, while his friend and former colleague, Detective Hans Bergemann uncovers a possible serial killer who has been responsible for the murders of 8 young women over several years. It is 1934 and the Nazis have carried out Operation Hummingbird (or Night of the Long Knives), during which several thousand of Hitler's perceived enemies were rounded up and executed without trial. The SS now controls the police and Willi believes it's unlikely there will be any serious investigation of the attack on Lola. As the story unfolds, the author weaves in actual events which occurred in Germany and Europe in the 1930's. The Nurember Race Laws target Germany's Jews and there are queues of people outside foreign embassies as many try to flee the country. Hitler annexes the Rhineland and the German Army grows in number from 100,000 (as agreed by the Versailles Treaty) to 3 million, but the Allies do nothing. Willi maintains an apartment in Munich in the guise of Karl Juncker, but the building's supervisor is suspicious of him and reports him to the authorities, albeit without much success, aside from Sergeant Gruber - another former colleague of Willi's - who devotes his time to tracking him down. Posing as a detective Willi quizzes a woman who survived an attack by the killer. Meanwhile, Heinrich Himmler - head of the SS and The Gestapo - takes charge of the case but decides that the investigation must remain secret as it would cause panic in the city. In the meantime, Willi tells Hans Bergemann that he believes the killer is following his victims as they travel home on a late night streetcar and is convinced it was the same man who attacked Lola. As he continues his discreet inquiries, there is a 9th victim but this time it seems the young woman may have seriously wounded her attacker. He is certain that the killer is an SS officer, but before he can act, he is caught by the dogged Sergeant Gruber and sent to Dachau, the site of Germany's first concentration camp. The conditions there are brutal, designed to ensure that its prisoners will never leave alive. Once again the author mixes historical events and characters with the lives of ordinary people who became participants - unwilling or otherwise - in the horrors of Nazism and the shaping of the immediate future of Germany as war became inevitable. Highly recommended. My thanks to the publisher Canongate Books/Severn House and NetGalley for a copy of this book in return for an unbiased review.

Peter Steiner has earned high level academic credentials in German and certainly has gained a more than passing understanding of the character and motivations of the people. "The Constant Man" is the second novel; featuring Willi Geimeiser, a detective working in Munich during the years prelude to the start of WWII and the first years of the war. Willi has a reputation of latching onto a crime and getting to the bottom of it and bringing the perpetrator to justice. Unfortunately, justice is not for the high ranking members of the Nazi party, and Willi is currently hiding in a cabin in the Bavarian forest after finding a member of the party guilty of murder. When Willi learns that Lola, his romantic interest, has been attacked in the street and hurt he returns to Munich in disguise in order to catch the man that harmed her. In looking at the incident with Lola Willi makes the determination that an individual who has stalked and killed several women is the man that attacked Lola. Again, it is the same set of circumstances that exist in this situation as in his previous problem. Based on location in the city near the headquarters of the Gestapo makes it highly likely that the killer is a member of that group and the police will not expend much energy solving the case. The author's understanding of the mentality that allowed the formation and buildup of the Nazi party at the time indicated with the naming of a megalomaniac like Hitler as supreme leader lend more than a little attraction to the novel. The people live in fear of the small group that has gained control of the country and become terrified of opposing the will of those that have now found themselves in power. It is the time of the Weimar Republic in Germany with economic problems being caused by the World War I reparations forced on Germany at the armistice in effect giving rise to a hyperinflation and devastating financial woes for the country. No problem learning about the causes and effects of conditions in Germany at the time of the novel making the reading that much more interesting.