Munich Wolf by Rory Clements

Sebastian Wolff is a homicide detective in Munich in 1935.  He's not a party member and has come afoul of the political police.  But when a young British girl is murdered, Wolff is the best bet to find a killer who has caused a political incident.  But then again, in  Munich in the 1930s everything is political.  And this investigation takes Wolff in to the upper echelons of the Munich power structure including a jaunt in to the Thule Society.  

I didn't know a lot about Clements going in to this novel.  I knew that he had written two different historical series' both of which had won historical fiction awards from the CWA, so there must be something going on there.  But I had some trepidation.  If you're writing about crime in Nazi-era Germany, I'm going to compare you to Phillip Kerr and his great Bernie Gunther.  It may not be fair, but it's going to happen.  Well Seb Wolff isn't going to replace Bernie yet, but he's enjoyable.  It probably helps that this is set in Munich and Gunther generally hung out in Berlin.  And Seb is a very different character.  Not quite as cynical as Bernie and probably somewhat more capable of playing the games necessary to stay alive as a non-party member in a very political job. 

The mystery was what it was.  Neither super compelling nor super obvious.  It was the work that Clements put in to the characters and the setting that was more intriguing.  I really had no idea that Munich was a huge destination for young upper-class Brits in the early 1930s to "continue their education."  This also introduced me to Unity Mitford and the Mitford Sisters, so that was interesting. 

This was a solid historical mystery and I'd certainly read another case about Sebastian Wolff.  And it seems increasingly likely I'll seek out Clements' earlier work as time allows.