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


‘Kutscher captures the zeitgeist with chilling accuracy.’ -The Guardian


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.


About the Gereon Rath Mysteries


1930s Berlin is a hotbed of vice and organised crime. When Inspector Gereon Rath leaves Cologne to join Berlin’s murder squad, he cannot begin to imagine the brutality and complexity of the world he is stepping into as communists and Nazis struggle for power.