The Night of Shooting Stars

May 15, 2020
Serving both in the Wehrmacht and the German military intelligence service, Martin von Bora has been through some of the worst that WWII has had to offer, including Stalingrad, but now the old-school soldier faces the inevitable end of the war. So what is Bora doing in Berlin in July 1944, summoned from the front by Arthur Nebe, head of the German Criminal Police, to investigate the murder of a clairvoyant who fraternized with the elite? As Pastor explains in this seventh installment in the series starring the aristocratic, angst-ridden, and quietly anti-Nazi Bora, we learn that the clairvoyant possessed a letter that could blow the lid off a conspiracy to assassinate the F�hrer. Bora wants no part of the plot, but he doesn't want to stop it, either. The failed assassination attempt of July 20, 1944, really happened, of course, and Pastor effectively incorporates the real-life players into this somewhat unwieldy but detail-rich melding of fiction and fact. Bora's fascinating personal story continues to exploit the wrenching ambiguities inherent in the conflict within a loyal soldier fighting for an abhorrent regime.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2020, American Library Association.)

May 25, 2020
In Pastor’s intelligent if somewhat labored seventh Martin Bora mystery (after 2019’s The Horseman’s Song), the gentlemanly German army officer, who has returned to Berlin from the Italian front in July 1944 for a funeral, receives a summons from Arthur Nebe, the chief of the Criminal Police. Many pages pass before Bora actually meets with Nebe, who wants him to investigate the murder of the enigmatic Walter Niemeyer, who went under a variety of aliases, one of which was the Weimar Prophet, a high-society clairvoyant who flourished in the decadent years before the Nazi takeover of Germany in 1933. Bora learns that Niemeyer was able to convince many of his extrasensory gifts, including high-ranking members of the Third Reich. Filled with period details, the narrative dwells on Bora’s complex family dynamics as well as encounters with such historical figures as Claus von Stauffenberg, a principal in the July 20 plot to kill Hitler. The author’s fine style compensates only in part for the slow-moving mystery plot. Fans of the late Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series may want to give Pastor a try.