Wolfram Fleischhauer Drei Minuten mit der Wirklichkeit (Three Minutes with Reality) Schneekluth Verlag, August 2001. 416pp. ISBN 3-7951-1724-0 There is plenty in this original, action-packed novel to keep the reader turning the pages. First, the romance: Giulietta Battin, about to get her first chance at the Deutsche Oper dancing in 'Tango Suite', goes to watch a visiting group of tango dancers from Argentina to get authentic colour, and falls passionately in love with the lead male dancer, Damian Alsina. Then the enigmatic characters, including Giulietta's father, Markus, presented in the book's strong opening sequence at a police interrogation, revealing that he is not what he seems, either in his background or in his overfond relationship with his daughter - a theme subtly hinted at throughout the novel - and Damian himself, whose origins are in Buenos Aires. Third, the whole spy scene of the 1970s, from East Germans training in Cuba to glimpses of the gruesome torture prisons in Argentina. Finally the colourful background of classical ballet and tango dancing. It is the characters' ability to disappear which links the various strands together. As Giulietta tracks the elusive Damian from Berlin to Buenos Aires and back, she uncovers her father's story, a disaffected GDR spy who took cover under an alias in the West, and Damian's background, the child of a torture victim, one of the 'disappeared', taken by a childless member of the regime, who rejected his adopted family when he discovered the truth of his birth. (In a clever twist, she uses her knowledge of choreographic notation to decipher coded messages in tapes of his dancing.) A grand finale is staged at the ballet itself, where Giulietta dances her lover's tango sequence to the music of the novel's title. As she and Damian meet secretly after the performance, the puzzle finally falls into place. Melodramatic though it may sound, this story works brilliantly. The author is a tango fanatic, and his passion certainly shows. Yet all his descriptions are crystal clear, including that of the codes. Worth the price of a seat in the stalls any evening, if it is not snapped up first for the silver screen.