Rosa Luxemburg, the figurehead of the
failed German workers' revolution, was assassinated by rightwing militia
on January 15 1919, though the body remained missing for four months until
it was found floating in a canal. What happened in the intervening weeks
is anyone's guess; and here is Jonathan Rabb's "novel-length
conspiracy theory about serial killings and police corruption in which all
roads lead to Rosa". Luxemburg's body is found to have been
disfigured with a mysterious pattern of knife markings and slathered with
an unguent that prevents decomposition. It is Detective Inspector Nikolai
Hoffner's job to determine whether this is the work of a psychotic
"chisel murderer" terrorising Berlin, or an elaborate plot with
its roots in the anti-semitic rightwing movement developing in Bavaria.
Rabb's frenzied plotting can be difficult to follow, but he has fun
incorporating the celebrity figures of postwar Berlin - the director of
the scientific institute is a man with "an unruly moustache and
basset hound eyes" who has come up with a theory variously described
as either ludicrous or genius. You don't need to be Einstein to work out
who it is.
Alfred Hickling
