The Constant Man

Starred review from September 1, 2019

At the end of the war in 1918, Maximilian Wolf returns to Munich. His sketches of soldiers and people in the street capture life in the battle-scarred postwar city. He gets a job at a newspaper, working beside journalist Sophie Auerbach. Together they chronicle the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazis until the newspaper offices are bombed, which brings police detective Willi Geismeier to their doors. Although Max's sketches help identify the bombers, Willi is taken off the case because he is a good detective who opposes criminals and Nazis. Throughout the 1920s, these three people chronicle the abuses and horror of Hitler and his supporters, until Hitler is named chancellor in 1933. All three abruptly disappear when a second newspaper, The Munich Post, is destroyed and the staff sent to Dachau concentration camp. The unconventional story resumes when the Americans arrive in Munich in 1945. In a disturbing, menacing novel featuring courageous, believable characters, former New Yorker cartoonist and author ("Louis Morgon" spy novels) Steiner tells a thought-provoking story of the importance of a free press when a country and its justice system are in upheaval. VERDICT Strongly recommended for all readers interested in this era or in a free press. Fans of Rebecca Cantrell's "Hannah Vogel" series will recognize the bleak atmosphere.--Lesa Holstine, Evansville Vanderburgh P.L., IN

Copyright 2019 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.

September 1, 2019
Prosecutors at the Nuremberg trials claimed afterward that the Nazis made their jobs easier with their obsessive record keeping. Atrocities were detailed on signed and dated forms. That compulsiveness is also the key to the criminal behavior exposed by Munich policeman Willi Geismeier, the good cop in this impressive novel. Steiner has pulled off a crime story and a procedural in the frame of a historical novel?in this case, the rise of Adolf Hitler and his Nazi Party. Maximilian Wolfe, artist and WWI veteran, is out for an evening with newspaper reporter Sophie Auerbach when the attack comes. There's gunfire. A death. Everyone involved is in some way touched by the ascendant Nazis, and the betrayals and cover-ups that follow reach deeply into the police and the establishment. Geismeier is given the file, and he does such a good job of investigating that he's fired. But he did keep that file, which is useful as G�tterd�mmerung unfolds. A precisely written, carefully plotted novel, all the more dramatic for its understated tone.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2019, American Library Association.)

August 20, 2021
How does Peter Steiner do it? He writes mostly plain declarative sentences that march along obediently, trying only to do their job. No literary flourish, no look-at-that! sequences. But it's near impossible to put down this story of German ex-policeman Willi Geismeier, ex because his detection work in the Hitler era identified a high-ranking Nazi as a rapist and murderer. Willi's working as a bicycle repairman now, in the late 1930s when the Reich is turning ugly and a new Ripper-style killer is at work. The bloodhound can't resist, and as he works we see one of the keys to the success of Steiner's deadpan style: his curiosity--a sort of sympathetic bond--about everybody Willi encounters. They're scene-stealers, like the aged Jewish woman who welcomes a fatal diagnosis because she can die in her own bed instead of the coming horror, or the retired burglar overjoyed because Willi frees him from steady employment. Even the killer gets a close look: ""Doing violence liberated him from his weak, ineffectual self. It felt good. This was power. Destruction was power.

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April 26, 2021
Set in Nazi Germany, Steiner’s taut sequel to 2019’s The Good Cop finds Willi Geismeier no longer a member of the Munich police force. Because he implicated a high-ranking Nazi official, one of Hitler’s favorites, in a string of killings and rapes, he’s on the run from his former colleagues, the SS, and the Gestapo. Willi takes refuge with an old school friend in the Bavarian Forest, but he comes out of hiding after his bar manager friend, Lola Zeff, is attacked and injured by a stranger on a Munich street. Despite his own fugitive status, Willi investigates, only to suspect that the assault is the work of a serial killer being hunted by his former partner on the force. Scenes from the murderer’s perspective ratchet up the tension. The plot is more of a cat-and-mouse game than a whodunit, but Steiner maintains suspense even after the identity of Lola’s assailant is revealed. Though the challenges of searching for the truth amid the brutality of the Nazi regime aren’t conveyed at the same level as Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels, this still satisfies. Agent: John Silbersack, Bent Agency.

April 1, 2021
A former police detective hunts a serial rapist in Nazi Germany. Now that he's identified high-ranking Nazi official Otto Bruck as a serial murderer and rapist in The Good Cop (2019), Munich detective Willi Geismeier has been forced to leave his police job and his home. Still feeling responsible for finding the man who attacked Lola Zeff, he returns secretly to Munich, living under the alias Karl Juncker, to find him. As he does his best to lie low, rising Nazi aggression and internal turmoil repeatedly put Willi's quest on the back burner. Steiner's brief chapters create a tapestry of Germany under the rising influence of the Gestapo. Ambitious storm trooper Lt. Walter Kempf arrests fellow Nazi Ernst R�hm for being homosexual as part of a project called Operation Hummingbird. DS Hermann Gruber worries that his wife, Mitzi, is in danger because of her Jewish heritage. Storm trooper Heinz Schleiffer is surprised to find his adult son, Tomas, at a show of "degenerate art" put on by Joseph Goebbels and disturbed to learn that Tomas opposes the Nazis. The intellectual Reinhard Pabst is lukewarm about the Nazi cause but attracted by the power his allegiance to the F�hrer provides. Willi does have his allies: Lola is anxious for closure, and his landlady, Frau Schimmel, informs him of visitors who come looking for him. His investigation gains traction with the discovery of more victims. All too often, though, Steiner's cursory attempts to provide a more complex depiction of Germany in this era distract attention from Willi's pursuit of a serial killer. A brisk if uneven thriller peppered with historical detail about Nazi Germany.

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January 1, 2021

Former Munich detective Willi Geimeiser wrecked his career by exposing a high-ranking Nazi official as a murderer and is now hiding in the Bavarian forest. But not for long: when his friend Lola is attacked, he returns to Munich in disguise to pursue a serial killer. Geimeister's series launch, The Good Cop, received an LJ-starred review.

Copyright 2021 Library Journal, LLC Used with permission.