"Rosa"
(Reviewed by Carisa Richner MAY 7, 2005)
Taking place in Berlin just after World War I, Rosa is a murder mystery, political conspiracy novel and history lesson all rolled into one. Rabb’s novel centers on the murder of Rosa Luxemburg, the famous socialist radical who was assassinated on January 15, 1919, but whose body was not discovered until four months later. This novel provides “one possibility” as to where Rosa’s body was during that period.
Our deeply flawed noir hero, Nikolai Hoffner, is on the trail of a serial killer who disfigures his victims by cutting an elaborate pattern into their backs. One of the victims turns out to be Rosa, whose body is fished out of a canal. Before the corpse is hurriedly removed from the custody of the Berlin police to the custody of the political police, Hoffner concludes that the pattern cut into Rosa’s back was made by a copycat killer. By analyzing the pattern and the mixture used to prevent one of the bodies from decomposing, Hoffner tracks down the serial killer fairly quickly, but the identity of the second killer and the question of why the political police are involved are not so easily solved.
Readers familiar with Berlin will be fascinated by the detailed descriptions of the city between the wars. Rabb has woven real events and historical characters so skillfully with his fictional characters that it is quite hard to tell them apart. The search for the second killer moves the action from Berlin to a Munich beer hall as the seeds are planted for the emergence of a new political faction, the National Socialist Party.
While the political history and the murder mystery aspects of the novel are well plotted and executed, the novel’s characterizations of Hoffner’s personal life are a bit confusing. Hoffner is married and has two sons, but has an affair with the girlfriend of his partner. Hoffner is portrayed as such a hard core police officer, more interested in solving a case than with the current political climate, that it seemed out of character for him to betray his partner in such a way. After reading some of Rosa’s personal writing, Hoffner becomes almost enamored of her, but treats his wife like a doormat. Is he too married to his work to be a good husband and father, or is he too desensitized by his grisly work to even notice the problems within his family?
Questions as to Hoffner’s internal motivations aside, the ending of the novel is satisfying; the reader learns the identity of the second killer (someone who you least suspect), how the murders were accomplished, and more importantly, why. Rosa Luxemburg’s body is dumped into the canal, and the specter of Hitler’s Germany rises. Hoffner gets his man in the end, but the price he pays is extremely high.
- Amazon readers rating:
from 13 reviews
Read a chapter excerpt from Rosa at Written Voices
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Bibliography: (with links to Amazon.com)
- The Overseer (1998)
- The Book of Q (2001)
- Rosa (February 2005)
- Shadow and Light (April 2009)
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Book Marks:
- Official website for Rosa
- BookReporter.com review of The Book of Q
- Fiction Addiction with author's background on Rosa
- The MysteryReader review of Rosa
- BrothersJudd review of Rosa
- BlogCritics review of Rosa
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About the Author:
Jonathan Rabb lives in New York City.
