This book is the fourth in a series, but the first I have read. I didn't feel I'd missed out by not having the back story: enough was revealed as the narrative continued. The story is set in the tumultuous, frightening, sickeningly nasty last days of WWII in Berlin, and revolves round the various members of a fairly disjointed family. As a depiction of a tense, deprived, difficult and dangerous period it's excellent. As an involving story of the personalities involved, it's far less so. It was a worthwhile history lesson for me, but I shan't read the other books in the series. ( )

Downing has a brilliant talent for portraying time and place as he does so well in this John Russell series set in wartime Berlin. In this novel, the fourth in the series, the Russians are advancing while the Wehrmacht retreat and Russell's wife hides with a young Jewish girl. Downing's writing has an authenticity which makes for a gripping story. I highly recommend this excellent series. ( )

At first I didn't like how Downing split the narration between the three main characters, John, Effie and Paul. But, like the previous books in the series, this one does a great job establishing the setting, for a time and place—the Soviet capture of Berlin—that I had not thought about before. John's heroism and the implausible places it takes him are amusing.

> ‘A corpse marriage,’ she said. ‘I shouldn’t call it that – I hate it when other people use that phrase. But it’s more than three years ago. Maybe you’d disappeared by then, but there was a Führer decree allowing women who’d just lost their fiancées to marry them post-mortem. There was a pension included, and that’s why I went for it, but I did love Gerd, and I’m sure he’d have seen the funny side of it – marrying me when he was already dead.’ ( )

Not bad overall, but exceptional in the last week or two of the Red Army advance into Berlin following the protagonist Russell parachuting in from Moscow, his actress wife hiding in the city with a little Jewish girl, and Russell's son in the Wehrmacht retreating into the city. 1 Dec. 2015. ( )

This is the fourth novel of a six book series. It leaps 3 years and 3 months forward from the last book, to April 1945. Initially it was a little disconcerting but then I realized that Downing has already shown us what he wanted to show us, and although there is likely a story that lies untold he wanted us to now see the fall of Berlin. Focus here is at times different, but also somewhat familiar - Downing again take us through the streets and train stations with a technique that may be tiresome to some readers but one that I generally find immersive. As before, there is quite a bit of story building before things take off at an exciting pace. Our primary character John Russell, British-American journalist, was escaping from the German Reich at the end of the last novel 'Stettin Station', and now is determined to get back in before the complete collapse and imminent Russian invasion of Berlin to make contact with his son Paul and his girlfriend Effie. Effie is more than a girlfriend really. His plan is to follow the Red Army as a journalist. Hmmm not so easy. The Soviets are as bad as the Nazis.

Unlike prior stories large parts of this happen away from John Russell and the story quick cuts between Russell, Effi and Paul throwing the reader a little off balance as the Soviet army attacks and the German army retreats. Very well done. ( )