The Fatherland Files, Kutscher - B+

                  The fourth novel in the 'Babylon Berlin' series is an absolutely great police procedural and the best so far. It opens in the summer of 1932. Gereon is called to a nighttime murder in a downtown department store on the day he meets Charly upon her return from her legal studies in Paris.  She deftly defers an answer to his somewhat awkward marriage proposal, but only for a few days before she says yes. Charly reports to the Alex as a CID Cadet.  Chief Inspector Gennat sends her to Homicide on a temporary assignment to assist on the case Rath is working on, and when Gereon suggests they need someone to go undercover at the department store, Gennat recommends Charly.  It turns out that the deceased in Gereon's case was killed in a manner similar to two others, and all three were involved in a moonshine scandal in East Prussia years ago.  Gereon is sent east to investigate and suspects that he has found the connection, but can't quite sort it out. One conclusion though is obvious: that the local police are as corrupt as the day is long.  The key to the plot is found when the Berlin police realize that a witness to the murder in the department store was more that a bystander. Once again, the author blends a great story with a fascinating depiction of Prussia at a crucial time in its history, a time which saw the Nazi's step closer to power.

The Art Thief: The True Story of Love, Crime, and a Dangerous Obsession , Finkel - B

             Stephane Breitwieser, "perhaps the most successful and prolific art thief who has ever lived" stole not for gain, but to "surround himself with beauty."  He was an unemployed freeloader who lived on the top two floors of his mother's house with his partner, Anne-Catherine. Those two floors were filled with a vast, magnificent $2B art collection. He was born in Alsace in 1971. The couple met in 1991, and immediately committed to each other. Three years later, he snatched a walnut pistol from a small museum, and thus began a career of consistent brazen thievery. He targeted small regional institutions, mostly in France and Switzerland, because their security was very light. One of the museums the couple stole from had a hidden security camera, and a Swiss art crimes inspector was soon on their trail. In France, a theft in Blois also attracted the attention of the authorities. They were arrested in Lucerne in May, 1997, but talked their way out of incarceration. His compulsion to constantly steal continues unabated, and he was arrested once again in Lucerne in late 2001. This time, the Swiss kept him in custody and obtained a search warrant for his house. When the authorities investigated his home, they found no art of any kind. His mother had  dumped the hard goods in a canal and burned the paintings. In Switzerland,  Breitweiser breaks down and confessed, and after a trial he was sentenced to four years in jail. He was tried in France in 2005. He was sentenced to two years, his mother a few months and Anne-Catherine was required to pay a small fine. Between the two countries, he served three years and seven and a half months.  Stephane picked up a handy $100,000 for collaborating on his story and seemed to be headed in the right direction when he was arrested for shoplifting at an airport. After a brief detention, he stole a Brueghel in Belgium and went to jail until 2015.  He eventually returned to thievery, this time for profit, and is currently under house arrest wearing an ankle bracelet.          

Stranglehold, Rottenberg - B+

          On a Monday morning when Ari Greene, senior detective in Toronto, shows up at a chintzy motel for his weekly assignation with the married Crown Prosecutor, he finds her strangled. Before he can consider his next step, he hears sirens in the distance and steps away. When the investigating detective, Kennicott, tells him about the case, he decides to keep quiet, and concludes he needs to solve the case on his own. As clues start to come in, Kennicott begins to think that perhaps the mystery man seen at the motel that morning was Greene, and arrests him for murder. The trial begins, and the prosecution lays out its circumstantial evidence case. The defense counters, and slowly spreads doubt about the timeline. The court is adjourned for the weekend when the truth is spectacularly splashed all over Toronto's television news and papers on. Thrilled to find a series with a decade-and-a-half of stories to tell.