From Jonathan Rabb, whose last novel the critic John Leonard hailed as “a ghostly noir that could have been conspired at by Raymond Chandler and André Malraux”, comes a dazzling new mystery that sweeps from the lots of Weimar Germany’s renowned Ufa studio, to the morgue at the Kriminalpolizei headquarters, to Berlin’s notorious sex clubs and beyond. Berlin, 1927. It’s the heyday of the Weimar Republic, and Ufa – the home of German cinema – is producing some of the most acclaimed films of the time. But when a studio executive is found dead in his office bathtub, the discovery sets in motion an investigation that will expose the darker and more desperate side of a country coming apart at the seams. Assigned to look into the supposed suicide is Herr Kriminal-Oberkommissar Nikolai Hoffner, who is determined to find the truth behind what he firmly believes is murder. With the help of Fritz Lang, the German director, and Alby Pimm, the leader of the most powerful crime syndicate in Berlin, Hoffner finds his case taking him beyond the world of film and into the far more treacherous landscape of Berlin’s sex and drug trade, the rise of Hitler’s Brownshirts (the SA), and the even more astonishing attempts by onetime monarchists to rearm a post-Versailles Germany. Swept up in the case are Hoffner’s new lover, an American talent agent for Metro-Goldwin-Mayer, and his two sons: Georg, who has dropped out of school to work at Ufa, and Sascha, the angry older son, who, unknown to his father, has become fully entrenched in the new German Workers Party as the aide to its Berlin leader, Joseph Goebbels. With the atmospheric intensity of Alan Furst and the masterful storytelling of Joseph Kanon, Rabb magically fuses a smart, energetic narrative with layers of fascinating, vividly documented history. His Berlin comes alive as a world both decadent and dangerous – and filled with a vibrant cast of characters both historical and fictional. Shadow and Light is an electrifying, sophisticated thriller set in a darkly beautiful Berlin poised on the edge of destruction.