In The Spotlight: Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke

Hello, All,

Welcome to another edition of In The Spotlight. As I mentioned in last week’s Spotlight, historical crime fiction lets us learn about a different time and place at the same time as we’re caught up in a mystery. And for several reasons, World War II seems to be a time that has enduring fascination for people. Last week, we took a look at the years leading up to World War II in the Soviet Union. This week, let’s take a look at the same decade (a few years earlier), but in Berlin. Let’s turn the spotlight on Rebecca Cantrell’s A Trace of Smoke, the first of her Hannah Vogel novels.

A Trace of Smoke begins in 1931 Berlin, where Hannah Vogel is a crime reporter for the Berliner Tageblatt. She writes under the name of Peter Weill and under that name, has gotten a good reputation. One day, she’s at the local police station when she happens to look at the photographs displayed in the station’s Hall of the Unknown Dead. To her shock, one of the photographs is of her younger brother Ernst, whose stabbed body was found in the water of the Spree by a sightseeing boat. Vogel is shocked and devastated, but she cannot let anyone know that Ernst is dead. That’s because she and Ernst lent their identity papers to Jewish friends who used them to escape Berlin and who plan to return the papers to her when they’ve reached safety. Vogel knows that it means not just her friends’ lives, but her own if the authorities find out about the identity switch. Still, she’s horrified by what she’s discovered, and wants answers. So very quietly, she begins to ask questions.

She begins with Ernst’s lover Rudolf von Reiche, a man she’s always detested because she blames him for Ernst’s decision to leave school and start performing at the El Dorado, a seedy gay nightclub. The dislike is emphatically mutual, so Vogel doesn’t expect she’ll get much help from von Reiche, and she certainly doesn’t want to reveal that she knows Ernst is dead. Learning little from him, Vogel begins to make her own investigations.

Little by little, she finds out that Ernst was involved with several high-ranking Nazis, who are consolidating their power in Germany and have already become a serious force to be reckoned with. She also discovers other secrets about Ernst that she hadn’t known before. For example, late one night, a boy she’s never seen before comes to her home. She discovers that the boy’s name is Anton and that he carries a birth certificate listing Ernst Vogel as his father and Hannah Vogel as his mother. Vogel knows that she’s not Anton’s mother and tries her best to find out who the boy really is and whether he is her nephew. Her efforts are fruitless, but she takes Anton in and tries to take care of him as best she can.

In the days that follow, Vogel continues to ask questions and follow up leads, all the while doing her best to keep herself and Anton safe. That’s not an easy task, as she has to continue to hide the fact of Ernst’s murder. Soon enough, though, the wrong people find out that Vogel is asking too many questions and she’s soon in more danger than she could have imagined. In the end, though, she discovers who killed her brother and why. She also discovers who Anton is and how he figures into the mystery.

One of the most important elements in this novel is its setting and atmosphere. The reader is placed unmistakeably in 1931 Berlin. There’s much discussion of the Nazi rise to power, and people have begun to be very afraid – unless they’re Nazis. In fact, in one scene, Vogel has managed to get hold of some money and she and Anton go to Wertheim’s Department Store to buy clothes for the boy, who has almost none. On the way out, they’re harassed by Nazi thugs who don’t want “good Germans” shopping at “Jewish stores.” She and Anton manage to escape relatively unscathed, but it’s a near thing and it shows just how tense the times are.

We also get a sense of the economic desperation of the times. More than once, Vogel scrounges for food and considers a full day’s worth of meals a luxury she can rarely afford. Certainly she doesn’t have money for new clothes and shoes. And she’s not the only one. Many women have turned to prostitution so that they can eat, and even people who can afford to keep their homes and feed their families don’t have any to spare.

The physical setting is also very important in this novel, and Cantrell places the reader in Berlin in every way.

 

“It was only a short bus ride…to the expensive shopping district on Leipziger Strasse. Werheim was the largest department store in the world, even the Kaiswer shopped there before the war…Massive pillars supported each of the four arches at the Leipziger Strasse entrance, and I felt as tiny as an ant.”

 

“The train stopped at Kaiserhof station. I had missed my connection at Friedrichstadt. I should have climbed out and taken a bus to Moabit for the trial [a trial Vogel is covering for the paper] but instead I rode west towards the more expensive borough of Wilmersdorf. Eventually this subway would take me to the Berlin Zoological Gardens, only a few blocks from Ernst’s apartment building.”

 

Although there isn’t a map of the city in my edition of the book, Cantrell provides a very helpful and interesting guide to some of the important places and people mentioned in the novel.

One more point is well worth mentioning. One of the biggest challenges of writing an historical novel is ensuring that the characters don’t have today’s knowledge or insights. In 1931, the Nazis had not yet assumed power in Germany, the economy was in turmoil and the government was unstable. All of this Cantrell conveys authentically. The full horror of the Nazi regime didn’t come until later, so it’s not a part of this novel. That’s a delicate balance to achieve, and Cantrell manages it quite well.

Another element that runs through this novel is a set of strong characters. First and foremost is Hannah Vogel, from whose point of view the story is told. She’s smart and skilled, but far from perfect. She’s very quick-witted, and sometimes headstrong. Even she admits, too, that she can get obsessed, as she does with Ernst’s murder. But she’s a real person who feels the fear and hunger of the times. Vogel copes with the challenge of a very traumatic past and a dysfunctional family. But, refreshingly, she’s not a stereotypical, “haunted, wounded sleuth.” It is to Cantrell’s credit that Vogel doesn’t ask us to feel sorry for her.

There’s also Boris Krause, whom Vogel meets through one of her news stories and with whom she begins a relationship. Krause is a powerful banker, so he doesn’t worry about money, but he and his daughter Trudi have their own scars. Yet neither indulges overly in self-pity or blame. Krause isn’t perfect; his temper sometimes gets the better of him and he doesn’t always think before he speaks. But it’s obvious that he and his daughter love each other and that he and Vogel care deeply about each other, too.

And then there’s Anton, the little boy with a mysterious past. He’s got a very interesting way of talking; in fact, he’s picked it up from a set of books by Karl May, the most popular German author of children’s books at the time. For him, that way of speaking works effectively and he’s a very appealing character. When we find out who Anton really is, we care even more about him and wish him well (No, he doesn’t turn out to be Vogel’s natural son). It’s little wonder Vogel opens her heart to him.

Vogel is surrounded by friends such as her best friend Bettina Waldheim and Bettina’s husband Fritz, who’s a police officer. There are other characters too, such as Vogel’s trusted friend Paul, with whom she works. All of them care about Vogel and do their best to help her. That friendship is a strong thread through this novel, and those characters add to it.

The mystery itself is a solid fit with the times and the motive for it is terribly sad, but believable. Vogel finds out the truth in ways that makes sense given her occupation, and the story takes place against a paranoid, desperate backdrop in a fascinating city. But what’s your view? Have you read A Trace of Smoke? If you have, what elements do you see in it?

 

 
 

Coming Up On In The Spotlight
 

Monday 5 March/Tuesday 6 March – Miss Smilla’s Feeling for Snow – Peter Høeg

Monday 19 March/Tuesday 20 March – Deadly Appearances – Gail Bowen

Monday 26 March/Tuesday 27 March – The Case of the Velvet Claws – Erle Stanley Gardner