THE BRIDGE OF SIGHS: OLEN STEINHAUER

This is the story of Emil Brod, a young, green policemen, recently transferred to Homicide.  The novel is set just as WW II has ended, in an unnamed eastern block country, recently taken over by the Russian communist party, who have installed their puppet to control the masses.  It's most likely Hungary or  thereabouts.  Emil survived the war by fleeing to Helsinki and working on various fishing boats, just about as dangerous as being in the war.  He's an eager detective, but receives the cold shoulder from his peers because they think, at first, he's a Russian plant.  He forces the chief to give him a case, the brutal murder of a famous composer, and of course it turns out to be more involved then anyone thought, mostly because Emil digs up some dirt on a couple of politico higher ups,  creating problems for the department as well as Emil.  But like a dog with a bone, Emil will not give up, despite being shot three times, beaten up, and not taken seriously by his mates until he finds himself in a hospital with gun shot wounds.

After getting out of the hospital, he flies to Berlin, to pursue the leads, and we get a sense as to what it's like to be in a divided Berlin, move from the Soviet to the free American zone.  There he's able to  go through some old Nazi records, proving that the killer of the composer, one of the higher ups, colluded both with the Nazis and Russians, participating in mass murders.  Of course, Emil gets beaten up, again, by the Russians when he returns to their zone but they let him go, but it's not clear why.  Perhaps he was not responsible for any problems in their zone.

He returns, sets up an exchange with the powerful politico, trades the photographs of his Nazi connections, for Lena, the wife of the composer but now his lover.  It does not work out as planned, of course,  but he does get Lena back.  He knows that he's not safe, that the politico will eventually come after him, so he's made copies of the incriminating photograph.  Before he can do anything, word comes that the politico has been brutally murdered in his home, and its not clear by whom.  Thus ends Emil's first case, his pursuit of a corrupt politician, and now he's part of the homicide group, a veteran so to speak, even admired for his persistence.  Not a great read, not as good as Steinhauer's later books but for a first novel, I like the way he's able to create an atmosphere, in this case, eastern bloc countries in 1948.