Munich Wolf: The gripping new 2024 thriller from the Sunday Times bestselling author of The English Führer

I’ve read all of Rory Clements’ books and 'Munich Wolf', which was published in January, is the latest. I’m not sure whether it’s the start of a new series or a standalone novel, but I found it quite unsettling to read. It’s set in Germany in 1935 as the Nazi’s are tightening their grip on power, and the country is sleepwalking towards totalitarianism. Detective Sebastian Wolff is not a Nazi and the book opens with him being sent to Dachau concentration camp for failing to do the Nazi salute. But Wolff is well-connected and known to be a good detective. He’s also fluent in English, so when a young English girl, the Honourable Miss Rosie Palmer, is found murdered in Munich he’s released from the camp and sent back to the city to work the case.

He is assigned an ‘assistant’ to help him – the same man who reported him and got him sent to Dachau – so the likelihood of them working together effectively is slim. There’s also a political dimension because, back in England, the victim’s mother is a lady-in-waiting to Queen Mary, and in Germany the girl had been running with a crowd of upper-class English youngsters which included Unity Mitford (close friend of the Führer). What’s indisputable is that the murder was brutal and Wolff’s investigation walks a tightrope between police work and politics.

This is an atmospheric novel which feels completely real and, as usual, Rory Clements does a really good job of conveying a sense of time and place. There’s a big cast of characters, most of whom are very unlikeable; and on every page there’s a palpable sense of the brutality and corruption of the Third Reich which, in places, makes it hard to read. But the story does grab your attention and rattles along at a good pace although at the end, when everything is revealed, the killer and the motive behind the murder didn’t come as a surprise.

I’ve mentioned that Wolff was well-connected. His uncle is a close friend of Adolf Hitler and, in addition, the Nazi’s foreign press chief (Herr Hanfstaengl) is disposed to support Wolff to make sure the case can be closed to the party’s satisfaction. But there were several places in the story where I felt it was improbable that Wolff would have been able to do what he does, especially because he was being watched constantly by the BPP/Gestapo.

Pushing these thoughts to one side I did enjoy this book, although I hope it’s a standalone novel because I didn’t like it nearly as much as Rory Clements’s Tom Wilde series, which has more relatable characters. Wolff remained an enigma throughout Munich Wolf and by the end I still wasn’t sure I liked him very much. Still, I think this earned 4 Stars.
Review by: Cornish Eskimo