A Gereon Rath Mystery

5 primary works

Babylon Berlin

by Volker Kutscher

Published 19 May 2016

Berlin, 1929. Detective Inspector Rath, was a successful career officer in the Cologne Homicide Division before a shooting incident in which he inadvertently killed a man. He has been transferred to the Vice Squad in Berlin, a job he detests, even though he finds a new friend in his boss, Chief Inspector Wolter. There is seething unrest in the city and the Commissioner of Police has ordered the Vice Squad to ruthlessly enforce the ban on May Day demonstrations. The result is catastrophic with many dead and injured, and a state of emergency is declared in the Communist strongholds of the city. When a car is hauled out of Berlin's Landwehr Canal with a mutilated corpse inside the Commissioner decides to use this mystery to divert the attention of press and public from the casualties of the demonstrations. The biggest problem is that the corpse cannot be identified.

The Silent Death

by Volker Kutscher

Published 18 May 2017

MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN

Following international bestseller Babylon Berlin, Volker Kutscher takes us back to Berlin in the second Gereon Rath Mystery. In The Silent Death, Inspector Rath investigates crime and corruption in the shadow of the growing Nazi movement.

March 1930. The film industry is changing rapidly, with talking films taking over the silver screen.

Celebrated actress Betty Winter is killed when a spotlight falls on her during the filming of a new talkie.

It looks like an unfortunate accident at first, but Gereon Rath finds clues that other detectives miss, all suggesting it was murder.

The prime suspect is a runaway lighting technician, but the Rath’s investigation points to a different explanation. Soon he is out on his own as tensions rise between rival film studios, and violence breaks out between Communists and Nazis.

It’s no time for distractions, so naturally that’s when his father asks him for help with a case of blackmail, and ex-girlfriend Charly Ritter reaches out to talk about getting back together.

With personal and professional destruction on the line, Rath will find himself fighting for the truth and his own life as all around him political factions fight for the soul of Berlin.

Goldstein

by Volker Kutscher

Published 1 January 2014

Berlin, 1931. A power struggle is taking place in Berlin's underworld. The American gangster Abraham Goldstein is in residence at the Hotel Excelsior. As a favour to the FBI, the police put him under surveillance with Detective Gereon Rath on the job. As Rath grows bored and takes on a private case for his seedy pal Johann Marlow, he soon finds himself in the middle of a Berlin street war. Meanwhile Rath's on-off girlfriend, Charly, lets a young woman she is interrogating escape, and soon her investigations cross Rath's from the other side. Berlin is a divided city where two worlds are about to collide: the world of the American gangster and the expanding world of Nazism.

The Fatherland Files

by Volker Kutscher

Published 9 May 2019

MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN

Berlin, 1932: A drowned man is found in a freight elevator, miles from any standing water. How did he get there?

A series of murders by drowning has shocked Berlin. Inspector Gereon Rath’s hunt for the killer has stalled, and his personal life is as turbulent as ever.

His fiancée, Charly, has at last started her probationary year with Berlin CID, experiencing all the challenges of working in a male-dominated police force.

When Rath’s work on the case of the drowned man sweeps him away to a remote village on the Polish border, his investigation clashes with local myths and the growing power of the Nazi party.

As he puts the pieces of the puzzle together, Rath begins to wonder if he has a serial killer on his hands. Can he catch the killer before another victim is claimed?

The March Fallen

by Volker Kutscher

Published 10 September 2020

MEET DETECTIVE GEREON RATH IN THE BOOKS THAT INSPIRED THE HIT TV SERIES BABYLON BERLIN

Longlisted for the CWA Crime Fiction in Translation Dagger 2021

Berlin, 1933: A homeless former solider is found stabbed under the railway arches.

Gereon Rath is on the case, but struggles to find clues. No one seems interested in solving the murder of a penniless veteran.

Meanwhile, Rath’s fiancée Charly has been assigned the case of fifteen-year-old Hannah Singer. Hannah killed her father and six others by starting a house fire but has now been declared mentally unfit to stand trial.

When a connection is discovered between Hannah and the dead ex-soldier, the two cases overlap.

It’s up to Rath and Charlotte to find justice for the dead man, and for Hannah even as the Nazis continue their rise to power and the Reichstag burns.

The new Germany is a frightening place, but policework must go on even through book-burning and marching, paranoia and fear.