The Sleepwalkers: A Novel

This is one of the best coming of age crime thrillers to come out. Taking a backseat into the early days of the anti-semimatic movement of the nazis, with a professional serial killer, with some kind of medical background and an almost supernatural way of luring in his victims, with hypnotic suggestion.. Mutilating his victims by surgically removing and reattaching his victims bones backwards... Throw in nazis with the fact our detective is Jewish... Well you get the idea.. READ IT!! :-)

Detective Willi Kraus is the type of man anyone would want on his or her team. He is notorious for bringing to justice a serial killer. However, at the rise of the Third Reich he has two things against him. First is the fact he is a Jew. The second problem for him is his connection to those currently in power as Hitler is beginning to gain his. Both of these make him the enemy of the Nazis. When he is called to investigate the floating body of a once beautiful woman he realizes he has a monster to find. This killer has obviously done some experimenting on this young girls lower legs, and she is just the first. His hunt takes him into some scary places. Scary because he is dealing with the rise of the Nazis and he is a Jew. This is an on the edge of your seat read. I knew nothing about the Weimer era until a couple of months back. That was when I read my first book set in that time period. Grossman has opened our eyes as to how Hitler slowly began his slide into power. It was not a situation where he showed up with guns one day and blew away the Jews to get his point across. He was sneaky. The title of this book tells it all. Sleepwalkers, is a metaphor for the people of that time. They walked right into the Nazi trap as if they were sleepwalking. Of course, we know it was too late when they realized it. That was the other thing that made the books so wonderful. Since I entered this book with prior knowledge of that time, I was constantly holding my breath for the main character. Unfortunately, I could see parallels between what went down during the rise of the Nazis and the turn our government is taking. I am not saying we are headed the way of Hitler. What I am saying is I see Americans turning a blind eye to everything that happens in our country saying it is not their fight, let someone else handle it. That is exactly how Hitler came into power. Even though I know the outcome of that Hitler’s rise to power and the effect it had on Jews and others, I kept hoping that things would be different for Willi Kraus. It is inherent that we want the good guys to win and the bad guys to fail. History doesn’t follow those wants. This book is necessary read for the historical accuracy, and the edge of your seat mystery. I will definitely find myself reading more of this author’s work.