I’ve been following this series for a couple years and with this book am all caught up.  It’s right down my alley being legal mystery an historical fiction.  They’re quite interesting –

 As usual, the structure has a frame story which includes Liam Tagert and Catherine Lockhart and their progress on. a case which goes back decades sometimes – this time to the era of Nazi Germany again – about half of Balson’s books deal with this.

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The Girl From Berlin
by Robert Bolson – 2018 / 379 pages
read by Fred Berman – 13h 23m
rating: A- / legal crime- historical
#4 in the Liam Taggert series
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Liam and Catherine get a phone call from an old friend who thinks maybe they can help his aunt who lives in Italy. It seems someone is evicting her from her farm where she has lived almost all her life.

They agree and when they get to meet Gabriella they find she is an old woman who is scared to tears of of losing her land. She hands them a small book and tells them to read it.

About 1/3 of the book deals with Gabi’s plight in the 21st century Italian courts, while the other 2/3rds is the historical background presented Gabi’s book. It’s the tragedy of gifted Jewish musicians in Nazi Germany. It is indeed a historical novel. I suspect a good number of the names, places and events are true. And what Balson invented is wonderful.

Balson is not a terribly literary writer, but he brings a legal story to life with deeply felt emotions, twists and thriller aspects plus a great ending.

Although Balson’s series has an overarching plot in the relationship between Liam and Catherine and sometimes prior cases are referred to, they are stand-alone novels in which the individual book’s plot is far more important. They can certainly be read out of order.

Book 1  Once We Were Brothers  – 2013. –  Holocaust (A+)

Book 2 – Saving Sophie.  2015 – Middlel East  (A-)

Book 3 – Karolina’s Twins–  2016 Holocaust – (A-)

Book 4- The Trust. 2017 – Northern Ireland – (A+)

Book 5 – The Girl From Berlin  – 2018 Holocaust – (A)

Some things I Googled:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Berlin_Philharmonic

https://www.wsws.org/en/articles/2007/12/reic-d18.html

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wilhelm_Furtwängler

Theresienstadt https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Theresienstadt_Ghetto

Review: https://rhapsodyinbooks.wordpress.com/2018/11/08/review-of-the-girl-from-berlin-by-ronald-h-balson/