Joe Holderness, called Wilderness, is raised by his grandfather as a very adept cat burglar, who can easily steal most anything he wants and get away with it. He's drafted into the RAF right after the war, and is taken under the wing of an intelligence officer. Wilderness' language skills and stealth make him a good candidate for performing all sorts of intelligence acts for the RAF. Eventually, he winds up in Berlin at the time of the building of the wall, and then later. For the most part, it's a fascinating book, as Wilderness' exploits are shown. And the older woman who his boss sends him to for an education, is a well-drawn character, very fascinating. In Berlin, Wilderness works beyond his remit and creates a complicated way to sell contraband in the Eastern sector; that leads to some personal disasters and the mission goes wrong. The book dragged a bit in the last half, and the ending was pretty abrupt and not very satisfying. Still, I did like the character and will probably read some more. ( )

Joe Wilderness , Book 1

What is it with random timelines and books? It seems half the books I read this year has had timelines which have jumped around like crazy. This book takes place in the 1960s and 1940s and follows Joe and Nell, two people caught up the end of the war.

I liked the book quite a bit. Joe is some kind of hero/anti-hero type that seems to be irresistible to women. A bit of a James Bond but absolutely not a James Bond and with very little care for what is right and what is wrong.

Nell is a young German lady determined to do the right things. She is the anti-Joe. ( )

One of the things that drew me to read this book was the comparison to Alan Furst. Furst’s earlier works were sensationally good but it seemed to me that the quality dwindled with each new book. In fact Night Soldiers, which I believe was his first, was the best and he’s never improved on it.

The resemblance to Furst is mainly due to the time period covered in Next We Take Berlin, being set in the post-war world and running into the early sixties. The writing style, however, is more ornate and that’s a plus as far as I’m concerned. I like the sparse language of Furst but Lawton’s prose is better suited to describing the complexities of the post-war world.

Lawton’s protagonist is a likable London wide boy and his exploits as a burglar and black marketeer segue nicely into his burgeoning role as a spy. The amount of detail given of his exploits in post-war Berlin are convincing and showcase the immense amount of research that must have gone into writing the book. The only criticism I have is that the espionage plot set in the sixties comes to an abrupt end signalling (I think) a sequel.

A very enjoyable read and I’ve already bought the next book in the series. I’m eager to get started ( )

This book poses as a post-WWII spy thriller. But it's mostly a well-researched historical novel about 1) life in London's impoverished Eastside London circa WWII and 2) Berlin in the aftermath of WWII. The central characters are well-developed and the book is rich in historical detail. I quite relished it. However, if you are looking for a suspense-laden plotty spy thriller, this is probably not a book for you. The plot takes a third seat to the above-mentioned details, and the book's ambiguous resolution will leave most devotees of this genre dissatisfied.

For those reasons I tagged this book a 'literary thriller.' ( )