City of Shadows

by Ariana Franklin

First published 2006

Amazon

4.0(5,358)

Berlin, 1922. Russian Jewish émigré Esther Solomonova works for the opportunistic nightclub owner known as Prince Nick when he discovers a disturbed woman in an asylum who claims to be Grand Duchess Anastasia, the daughter of Nicholas II believed murdered with the rest of the Romanov family. Nick sees a route to the supposed Romanov fortune and installs the claimant, Anna Anderson, under Esther's reluctant supervision. Then people close to Anna begin to die, suggesting that her fear of a pursuer may not be delusion.

Esther joins police inspector Schmidt in tracing the murders through a city damaged by war, hyperinflation and political violence. The investigation stretches into the early 1930s as Adolf Hitler and the National Socialists move from the margins towards power, turning the uncertainty surrounding Anna Anderson's identity into one strand of a much larger historical transformation. Franklin combines the real Romanov survival controversy with a fictional murder plot and the collapse of Weimar democracy.