Title: The "88" Affair - Suspense at the time of the Berlin Wall - Ed Nouce - book
Summary :
"CASE 88" begins in an almost banal way... Except that nothing will be in this unique and captivating story! Ed Nouce ventures brilliantly into the world of the SPY novel while remaining faithful to his poetic universe which is combined with great rigor in the treatment of the historical elements structuring the plot. Brussels, summer 1973. A young girl is preparing to return home to Rhineland-Palatinate for the summer holidays, but she overhears a conversation that makes her fear the worst for the health or even the very life of her father. This is the simple starting point of a suspense that will give the reader NO RESPITE. Faced with the prospect of imminent death, one's own or that of a loved one, everyone reveals the most intimate recesses of their heart and sometimes their soul... The second part of the novel takes us the following year (May 1974) to WEST BERLIN, the capitalist showcase, where Chancellor Willy Brandt has just been forced to resign following the Wilhelm affair. But we will go just as often to communist EAST BERLIN, at the time of Erich Honecker and the reign of the sinister STASI, under the constant gaze of the SOVIET Big Brother. In this historical setting of the Cold War, the WALL is omnipresent and we cross it several times. Surveillance, disappearances, stalking, autopsies, interrogations, nothing will be spared us... This profound and beautiful novel is the fourth volume of Ed Nouce's family saga, LIFE RETURNS TO US AT DAWN. But rest assured, there's no need to have read the previous books to enjoy this thrilling tale and become attached to the characters! Ed Nouce's loyal readers will find the Kuhn family and their friend Smoke-Finch in the main roles. Let's add that at least one new hero makes a remarkable entrance in the second part. And as always, the author is also, and perhaps even primarily, interested in the MYSTERY or the CRACK that is at the center of the human soul. In this register, it's impossible not to particularly salute the chiaroscuro touches suggested in the portrait of MANFRED KUHN, the former Abwehr colonel, a complex character, full of restraint, introversion, and ambiguity, decidedly unforgettable... Hélène confirms the light that has emanated from her since the first novel, and the young people, Markus, Wilhelm, and Téri, assert their temperaments. With no doubt a special mention to Wilhelm, striking in the confrontation with his father... As for the British Horace Smoke-Finch, in his seventies, but still in the know, he retains his humor as well as his panache.
