Cozy drama set in August 1961 BERLIN

28th March 2025

Nightingale & Co by Charlotte Printz, a cozy drama set in August 1961 BERLIN

TR: Marina Sofia

Nightingale & Co by Charlotte Printz is billed as a cozy drama. This is true, in that there are no gory murders, but it is still an action-packed adventure of a book! It’s set in Berlin in 1961, just as the wall is being built to divide the communist East from the West of the city. Carla Koslovsky has taken over her late father’s detective agency and is working hard to support her disabled mother. She’s a diligent and straight-laced young woman, who is unlikely to bend the rules, still less break them, in pursuit of her clients’ causes.

Then along comes Wallie, a woman Carla’s age who claims to be her half-sister and who has escaped from East Berlin, just as restrictions on travel are imposed. The two are as unalike as can be and Carla is shocked that Wallie even exists. She also has serious doubts that they could share a father. Wallie is her unconventional, vivacious and determined to help solve Carla’s cases. For her part, Carla is terrified that Wallie’s approach will damage the reputation of the agency.  She has little time to look into Wallie’s past because she has several cases to juggle. There’s Niki, aka Ingrid, who would like Carla to locate a serviceman called Jack, or Bobber, with whom she has had a romantic tryst. Then there’s Alma, who wants a divorce from her violent husband and who is arrested accused of his murder.

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I found the story a little difficult to follow at times. The pace of the book is hectic, which is great, but often the narration cut back and forward between the present and the past. In addition, Carla is handling several cases and Wallie is often going off at a tangent on one or other of these at the same time as her sister, with her very different approach. The distrust between the sisters is a major distraction, as are the many alternative explanations for each case. Several of the characters seemed to have more than one name, which didn’t help my concentration. If this makes it sound as though I didn’t enjoy the book, that’s not the case, but it did require me to focus!

The translation by Marina Sofia copes admirably with the many challenges of the book, such as explaining the importance of addressing someone in formal German when you don’t know them well – an issue of grammar that doesn’t exist in English. On the other hand, I found the use of slang a bit jarring and confusing. Presumably there was something similar in the original.

The setting is as much about the history of the Berlin Wall as the location itself, though the author does describe key areas of the city: the faded glory of the smarter parts of Berlin and the contrast with the seedier areas, the twinkling nightclubs and the war-ravaged sites. I don’t know either the geography or the history of the city very well, having just paid one visit, and feel that as an English reader I might have enjoyed a little more explanation of both. It is a stunning city, after all!

Another curious feature of the book is its back story. The narrator mentions various events in Carla’s past as though they had already been portrayed in an earlier volume. I wonder whether this is in fact the second, and not the first, book in the Nightingale & Co series that was drafted.

My verdict is that this is a fascinating glimpse of an important period of Berlin’s history, as well as being a breathtaking whodunnit. Definitely worth a read.

Sue for the TripFiction Team

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