Potsdam Station
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David Downing. (2011). Potsdam Station. Soho Press.

David Downing. 2011. Potsdam Station. Soho Press.

David Downing, Potsdam Station. Soho Press, 2011.

David Downing. Potsdam Station. Soho Press, 2011.

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1. • value: Nazis
2. • value: journalist
3. • value: World War II
4. • value: Jewish
5. • value: literary fiction
6. • value: Historical
7. • value: 1940s
8. • value: Fiction
9. • value: crime
10. • value: germany
11. • value: Moscow
12. • value: assassin
13. • value: novels
14. • value: Thrillers
15. • value: suspense
16. • value: Jews
17. • value: Military
18. • value: spy
19. • value: mystery
20. • value: mysteries
21. • value: WWII
22. • value: espionage
23. • value: Historical mysteries
24. • value: Russia
25. • value: Military Fiction
26. • value: Thriller
27. • value: police
28. • value: escape
29. • value: Second World War
30. • value: Berlin
31. • value: International
32. • value: literature
33. • value: fiction books
34. • value: historical mystery
35. • value: spy novels
36. • value: thriller books
37. • value: crime books
38. • value: mystery books
39. • value: spy thrillers
40. • value: Murder mystery books
41. • value: mystery novels
42. • value: mystery thriller suspense
43. • value: suspense books
44. • value: military books

creators

1. • role: Author
   • fileAs: Downing, David
   • bioText: David Downing grew up in suburban London. He is the author of numerous books for adults and children, including four novels featuring Anglo-American journalist John Russell. He lives with his wife, an American acupuncturist, in Guildford, England.
   • name: David Downing

imprint

Soho Crime

publishDate

2011-04-05T00:00:00-04:00

isOwnedByCollections

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title

Potsdam Station

fullDescription

In April 1945, Hitler’s Reich is on the verge of extinction. Assaulted by Allied bombs and Soviet shells, ruled by Nazis with nothing to lose, Berlin has become the most dangerous place on earth.
 
John Russell’s son Paul is stationed on the Eastern Front with the German Army, awaiting the Soviets’ final onslaught. In Berlin, Russell’s girlfriend Effi has been living in disguise, helping fugitives to escape from Germany. With a Jewish orphan to care for, she’s trying to outlast the Nazis.
 
Russell hasn’t heard from either of them since fleeing Germany in 1941. He is desperate to find out if they’re alive and to protect them from the advancing Red Army. He flies to Moscow, seeking permission to enter Berlin with the Red Army as a journalist, but when the Soviet’s arrest him as a spy, things look bleak—until they find a use for him that has him parachuting into Berlin behind German lines.

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reviews

1. • premium: False
   • source: The New York Times Book Review
   • content: "John Russell has always been in the thick of things in David Downing's powerful historical novels set largely in Berlin . . . Downing provides no platform for debate in this unsentimental novel, leaving his hero to ponder the ethics of his pragmatic choices while surveying the ground level horrors to be seen in Berlin."
2. • premium: False
   • source: Washington Post
   • content: "Reminiscent of Woody Allen's Zelig, Russell, the hero of Downing's espionage series, can't seem to resist inserting himself into climactic moments of the 20th century ... Downing has been classed in the elite company of literary spy masters Alan Furst and Philip Kerr ... that flattering comparison is generally justified. If Downing is light on character study, he's brilliant at evoking even the smallest details of wartime Berlin on its last legs.... Given the limited cast of characters, Downing must draw on almost Dickensian reserves of coincidences and close calls to sustain the suspense of his basic hide-and-seek story line. That he does ingeniously. It helps to read Downing's novels in order, but if Potsdam Station is your first foray into Russell's escapades, be forewarned that you may soon feel compelled to undertake a literary reconnaissance mission to retrieve and read the earlier books."
3. • premium: False
   • source: Washington Times
   • content: "The echo of the Allied bombings and the crash of the boots of the invading Russians permeate the pages in which David Downing vividly does justice to the drama... The book is a reminder of what happened and those who allowed it to happen...The book lives up to the others in the Russell series, serving as yet one more reminder of a world too many have entirely forgotten."
4. • premium: False
   • source: Toronto Globe and Mail
   • content: "Downing is brilliant at weaving history and fiction, and this plot, with its twists and turns--all under the terrible bombardment of Berlin and the Third Reich's death throes--is as suspenseful as they come. The end, with another twist, is equally clever and unexpected."
5. • premium: False
   • source: Tulsa World
   • content: "Excellent period work."
6. • premium: False
   • source: Kirkus Reviews
   • content: "The main attraction is the tragic mis-en-scène of a once-beautiful city undergoing the ravages of modern warfare, a wide-angle synthesis of scenes and snapshots from the history books. A wide canvas painted with broad strokes."
7. • premium: False
   • source: Publishers Weekly
   • content: "Gripping ... Downing convincingly portrays the final days of the Nazis in power, and his characters are rich enough to warrant a continuation of their stories, even after the war."
8. • premium: False
   • source: St. Petersburg Times

   • content: "An atmospheric tale."
9. • premium: True
   • source:
   • content:

     February 7, 2011
     Set in early 1945, Downing's gripping fourth novel featuring Anglo-American journalist John Russell (after Stettin Station) finds Russell in the Soviet Union. As the Russians approach Berlin, Russell devotes his energies to trying to reunite with his loved ones—his 18-year-old son, Paul, a member of the German army on the Eastern Front, and his lover, Effi Koenen, a former actress who now works to smuggle Jews to safety. Russell attempts to persuade the Russians that he should accompany them into Berlin, but they suspect that he's an American spy sent to sell them on the idea that the U.S. and Britain have no interest in the German capital. Meanwhile, the Nazis pick up a group of refugees Effi helped to escape, raising the prospect that one of them might disclose her involvement. Downing convincingly portrays the final days of the Nazis in power, and his characters are rich enough to warrant a continuation of their stories, even after the war.

10. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 1, 2011
      

      The fourth in Downing's World War II "station" series (Stettin Station, 2010, etc.) finds journalist-spy John Russell making a Faustian pact with the Russians poised to invade Berlin, where his girlfriend Effi and son Paul struggle to survive the Reich's final days.

      From roving SS squads intent on preventing desertion to bombardment and imminent invasion by Russian soldiers bent on rape and revenge, Berlin is fraught with danger for average citizens—far worse for underground operatives like Effi who help smuggle Jews to safety or for German soldiers like Paul, at the front under heavy fire. All Russell knows is his family is trapped in Berlin and that Eisenhower has promised Berlin to the Russians, so if he's going to get there, it's going to be in a Russian tank. He flies to Berlin where his requests to be attached as a journalist to the Red Army unit are rebuffed, but he manages to get the authorities' attention all the same. Eventually, the Russians agree to place him on a team searching Berlin for German atomic secrets. He's parachuted into the surrounding environs with no idea how he'll find his girlfriend and son, even less how he'll avoid liquidation at the hands of the Russians once their mission ends and he represents a liability. He can't know that Effi, harboring a Jewish orphan, has run afoul of the authorities, or even whether she and Paul are alive. Downing's characters are a bit thin and given to disingenuous reflection on the history they're witnessing. Certain turns of events are a little convenient, and his true mission, to save his loved ones, without clear direction and floundering in the chaos, lacks tension. The main attraction is the tragic mis-en-scène of a once-beautiful city undergoing the ravages of modern warfare, a wide-angle synthesis of scenes and snapshots from the history books.

      A wide canvas painted with broad strokes. What suspense there is lies in the protagonist's endgame, with atomic secrets up his sleeve and his loved ones' lives in peril.

      (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

11. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 1, 2011
      When we last saw American journalist John Russell, he was in Berlin in 1938 (Silesian Station, 2008), spying simultaneously for Germans, Americans, and Russians but mainly trying to stay alive and protect his German son, Paul, and film-actress girlfriend, Effi. Its seven years later now, April 1945, and the Reich is in its death throes. Having been forced years earlier to leave Germany to escape the Nazis, Russell is in Russia and, eager to reunite with his loved ones, trying to talk his way back into Berlin with the Soviet forces. Meanwhile, Effi is helping Jewish fugitives living in Berlin escape the city, while Paul, in the army, struggles to survive the Soviet onslaught (There were too many ways to be killed and too many hours in the day). The fate of Russell and his family drives the narrative, but our attention is held more by a succession of surreal images that tells the nightmarish story of a wars endwomen, taking advantage of a brief break in the bombing, frantically carving up a dead horse for food; Paul carrying two large sacks of arms, legs, and heads from an exploded building. Excruciating but gripping reading.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2011, American Library Association.)

12. • premium: True
    • source:
    • content:

      March 1, 2011
      

      The fourth in Downing's World War II "station" series (Stettin Station, 2010, etc.) finds journalist-spy John Russell making a Faustian pact with the Russians poised to invade Berlin, where his girlfriend Effi and son Paul struggle to survive the Reich's final days.

      From roving SS squads intent on preventing desertion to bombardment and imminent invasion by Russian soldiers bent on rape and revenge, Berlin is fraught with danger for average citizens--far worse for underground operatives like Effi who help smuggle Jews to safety or for German soldiers like Paul, at the front under heavy fire. All Russell knows is his family is trapped in Berlin and that Eisenhower has promised Berlin to the Russians, so if he's going to get there, it's going to be in a Russian tank. He flies to Berlin where his requests to be attached as a journalist to the Red Army unit are rebuffed, but he manages to get the authorities' attention all the same. Eventually, the Russians agree to place him on a team searching Berlin for German atomic secrets. He's parachuted into the surrounding environs with no idea how he'll find his girlfriend and son, even less how he'll avoid liquidation at the hands of the Russians once their mission ends and he represents a liability. He can't know that Effi, harboring a Jewish orphan, has run afoul of the authorities, or even whether she and Paul are alive. Downing's characters are a bit thin and given to disingenuous reflection on the history they're witnessing. Certain turns of events are a little convenient, and his true mission, to save his loved ones, without clear direction and floundering in the chaos, lacks tension. The main attraction is the tragic mis-en-sc�ne of a once-beautiful city undergoing the ravages of modern warfare, a wide-angle synthesis of scenes and snapshots from the history books.

      A wide canvas painted with broad strokes. What suspense there is lies in the protagonist's endgame, with atomic secrets up his sleeve and his loved ones' lives in peril.

      (COPYRIGHT (2011) KIRKUS REVIEWS/NIELSEN BUSINESS MEDIA, INC. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.)

popularity

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John Russell’s son Paul is stationed on the Eastern Front with the German Army, awaiting the Soviets’ final onslaught. In Berlin, Russell’s girlfriend Effi has been living in disguise, helping fugitives to escape from Germany. With a Jewish orphan to care for, she’s trying to outlast the Nazis.
 
Russell hasn’t heard from either of them since fleeing Germany in 1941. He is desperate to find out if they’re alive and to protect them from the advancing Red Army. He flies to Moscow, seeking permission to enter Berlin with the Red Army as a journalist, but when the Soviet’s arrest him as a spy, things look bleak—until they find a use for him that has him parachuting into Berlin behind German lines.

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   • description: Fiction / Thrillers / Espionage
2. • code: FIC022060
   • description: Fiction / Mystery & Detective / Historical
3. • code: FIC031050
   • description: Fiction / Thrillers / Military