Review: The Spring of Kasper Meier - Ben Fergusson

Berlin, 1946: teams of women clear the rubble from bombed-out streets, while occupying soldiers patrol the city, and a black-market flourishes. In the background, the Nuremberg Trials are underway, although this is never referred to in the text of Ben Fergusson’s debut novel, so remote is this grand historical narrative from the daily struggle for survival the city’s residents are engaged in. Relationships between individuals have been broken down into trades and ‘paid-for favours’: as Rebecca West describes in Train of Powder, her account of life in post-war Germany, ‘there was no money, there were only cigarettes’.

In the midst of the chaos Kasper Meier, a middle aged low-level racketeer, is drawn into a complicated blackmail plot by a young woman, while lurid rumours circulate that Allied soldiers are being murdered: ‘some ghostly woman is going around doing them all in... This idea that the ghosts of their rapees are coming back to kill them or some Amazonian group of women vigilantes are going round getting their revenge'.

The Spring of Kasper Meier has a similar dynamic to Graeme Greene’s The Third Man: both novels are set in a post-war underworld, and both feature a search for a missing person, along with a key figure who remains unseen for long stretches. Surprisingly, Fergusson holds off even longer than Greene before making the big reveal, drawing out the tension skilfully.

Kasper Meier has a reputation for being able to find people, so he is not surprised when a young woman, Eva Hirsch, approaches him for help finding a red-headed English pilot with bad teeth, who has apparently made her friend pregnant. He is reluctant to get involved with anything involving the military, but Eva is able to blackmail him with letters to a former lover. Even in this lawless city, she warns him, ‘everyone still hates queers’.

From here, Kasper is drawn into a complex plot, apparently masterminded by the sinister figure of Frau Beckmann, to assassinate soldiers who have raped German women. Beckmann uses a string of underworld contacts to coerce individuals like Meir into acting as accomplices, while those who refuse or ask too many questions often turn up dead. A pair of sinister children, Hans and Lena, act as enforcers for her, leaving threatening notes at Meier’s home, and even resorting to violence. Despite the danger he is in, Meier becomes fond of Eva, sensing some vulnerability and kindness in her, and attempts to find a way out for both of them, whilst also fulfilling his obligations to Frau Beckmann.

Fergusson’s Berlin is suitably unnerving: the city’s ramshackle bars are 'filled with shouting Russian voices and the smell of sweat, cheap schnapps and vomit'. Scarcity has driven the population to desperation: ruined buildings have been ‘sacked, turned, combed over by scavengers', there are long queues at waterpumps and dead horses are cut up in the streets by citizens desperate for meat. There is a brutalising effect on the inhabitants, such as Hans and Lena, and Heinrich, a former lover of Kaspar’s who has apparently sold his secrets to Frau Beckmann: as Eva observes, ’Honour isn’t what it was, Herr Meier’. Through Meier, Fergusson looks back to the pre-war bars and clubs of Berlin, allowing for a contrast in tone whilst also examining the way in which circumstances have warped the relationships between acquaintances then and now.  The narrative is driven along by strong dialogue, while the writing stays on the right side of hard-boiled, even if the word ‘aureole’ crops up more often than you’d normally expect. 

There are some contemporary parallels which can be drawn between Fergusson’s setting and news reports of the aftermath of the invasion of Iraq – particularly striking is the contrast between the gangs of citizens sifting through piles of rubble in Berlin and the influx of international contractors into occupied Baghdad. The Spring of Kasper Meier is not a novel which looks to make political points though, focussing instead on the effects of poverty and desperation on the normal inhabitants of a city. Each character is forced to confront the moral scruples they have to overcome if they want to fulfil their ultimate objective, making for a tense, compelling thriller.

                               
                                

To celebrate publication of The Spring to Kasper Meier, Little, Brown are running a ‘treasure hunt’ on Twitter – with a prize of a weekend in Berlin up for grabs, as well as copies of the book. The hunt starts on Monday 12th January, and runs all of this week. To take part in the hunt, you need to find four items that are featured in the book. Every day this week, a new item will be hidden on one these brilliant blogs:

Monday – www.workshyfop.blogspot.co.uk
Wednesday – www.betweenthelinesbookblog.wordpress.com
Thursday – www.booksmonthly.co.uk
Friday – www.wondrousreads.com

Just find the picture of the item, save it, then tweet it with the hashtag #KasperMeier. We’ll pick five winners every day to get a free copy, and then one winner will be chosen at the end of the week for the weekend in Berlin!