Dan Vyleta Books

Graham Greene's The Third Man meets Paul Auster as the Cold War heats up amidst the ruins of occupied Berlin.

Vienna, 1939. Professor Speckstein's dog has been brutally killed and he wants to know why. But these are uncharitable times and one must be careful where one probes... When an unexpected house call leads Doctor Beer to Speckstein's apartment, he finds himself in the bedroom of Zuzka, the professor's niece. Wide-eyed, flirtatious, and not detectably ill, Zuzka leads the young doctor to her window and opens up a view of their apartment block that Beer has never known. Across the shared courtyard there is nine-year-old Anneliese, the lonely daughter of an alcoholic. Five windows to the left lives a secretive mime who comes home late at night and keeps something - or someone - precious hidden from view. From the garret drifts the mournful sound of an Oriental's trumpet, and a basement door swings closed behind the building's inscrutable janitor. Does one of these enigmatic neighbours have blood on their hands? Doctor Beer, who has his own reasons for keeping his private life hidden from public scrutiny, reluctantly becomes embroiled in an enquiry that forces him to face the dark realities of Nazi rule.

Mesmerising, electrifying, Dickensian, dystopian - SOOT welcomes us into a world in which your sin is visible.

For once both comparisons (with Harry Potter and Philip Pullman's Northern Lights ) are apt . . . this is a novel that stays in the imagination long after it is read THE GUARDIAN 20160716