Tuesday, April 16, 2019

Kaddish for Lazar, by Michael Wuliger

"Kaddish for Lazar," by Michael Wuliger, in Berlin Noir, edited by Thomas  Wörtche, Akashic Press, 2019.

The publisher sent me an advance copy of this book.

"You're Jewish, aren't you?" the editor of Blitz Magazine asked me.
"Yes, I am." I felt uncomfortable.  "Why do you want to know?" That kind of question coming from Germans irritates me.  It runs in the family, I guess.
"Then you must have known Mark Lazar well," he said.

Because obviously all 30,000 of the Jews in Berlin must know each other, right?

Great opening for this story in which a freelance journalist is asked to look into the death by drowning of a prominent politician.  Suicide, accident, or something else?  Could his death be related to his immigrating from Russia after the Soviet Union fell?  Or to his plans to run for mayor?

The investigation is very interesting, the effect it has on the narrator even more so.  This is a very cynical story, which makes it very noir indeed.

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