Reading for pleasure: June 2022

Andrew de la Motte (translated by Marlaine Delargy) (Zaffre: £8.99)

Well, ally the title with the fact that the author is Swedish and you should have a fair idea of what you're going to get. I'm sure that some Scandinavian crime authors must set their books in the summer – I just can't remember any. Thus the focal point here is a lake in southern Sweden. It freezes in winter, barring a small area kept liquid by an underground spring. Locals know it as the eye of the nymph. A wee bit of added mysticism.

Laura, the central character, is a successful businesswoman in Stockholm, despite the involvement of her incompetent brother and interference from her ghastly mother. The company involves risk assessment (no, I don't get the business model either). She is one sharp cookie, her powers of observation and perception being positively Holmes-like. This comes out in an entertaining demonstration when we first meet her. Sadly, it largely disappears thereafter.

After her aunt drowns, Laura discovers she has inherited a substantial area of land, site of rundown visitor lodges, at a place called Gärdsnäset. That takes her back 30 years to 1987, to the last of what used to be biannual visits to her eccentric Aunt Hedda. Laura loved her aunt, loved the lake, loved the circle of friends she had, one in particular. The visits ceased after a terrible fire in which one of her circle died. Beyond that, we know little at the outset. How much does Laura know? More pertinently, how much did Hedda know?

Thereafter the book alternates the action between the present, when Laura must decide what to do with Gärdsnäset, and 1987 and the runup to the tragedy. De la Motte is a talented writer. The plot is well crafted, and the twist will surprise you. I enjoyed the ending, but I can't say that I much cared for the middle section, which dragged a little. Better to travel hopefully than to arrive? Perhaps, but in this case journey's end was best.

Helena Merriman (Hodder & Stoughton: £8.99)

This book follows the successful podcast of the same name in the Intrigue series on BBC Radio 4. It tells the story of West Berlin student, Joachim Rudolph, who, in the summer of 1962, began to dig a tunnel into East Berlin. The aim was to aid the escape of dozens of East Germans trapped by the erection of the Berlin Wall the year before. The story of the tunnel has been told before. However, this book (now in paperback, but published in hardback to coincide with the 60th anniversary of the construction of the wall), with its lucid, engaging prose brings the narrative to life. It reads almost as a thriller.

The tunnel was 3ft x 3ft and dug by hand using increasingly more effective tools. Part of the intrigue of this particular escape, was that the scheme was ultimately funded by the US TV channel NBC News, on condition that the tunnelling and hoped for escape would be filmed and broadcast on US television. The stakes were high. Tension was already heightened given the erection overnight of the Berlin Wall, with the West uncertain how to respond to the physical dissection of a city under the control and administration of the four Allied powers. If the East German authorities became aware of US support for those trying to escape and overcome the Anti-Fascist Protection Barrier, that tension would increase with unknown consequences.

It must be recalled that West German authorities were ordered not to return fire when the East German border guards were shooting at escapers. No support could be given. The tunnel ran 12m under the wall from the basement of a bakery at Bernauer Straße 78, to the basement of a tenement block at Schönholzer Straße 7: visit now and you’ll read a plaque on the wall. The going was tough given the sandy and sodden ground on which Berlin is built, 8,000 gallons being pumped out at one point. Merriman has fully researched the story, accessing the records of the Ministry of State Security and speaking to those who escaped, and indeed the planner, Herr Rudolph. On 14 September 1962, 29 people escaped, their new life in the West awaiting them. A testimony to the humanity shown by one to another.