Alex Capus Fast ein bisschen Frühling (A Touch of Spring) Residenz Verlag, January 2002. 176 pp. ISBN 3-7017-1286-7 In the ice-cold winter of 1933 two unemployed youths, Kurt Sandweg and Waldemar Velte, leave their home town of Wuppertal to escape the newly arrived Nazis and seek exotic adventure. To raise cash they rob a bank, accidentally kill the manager, and land up in no more romantic a spot than the equally ice-cold Swiss city of Basle. Here follow further bank robberies, brutal murders, and, ultimately, their deaths, after a girl they have taken up with, Dorly Schupp, who works in the music section of a large department store, discovers their identity and shops them to the police. At its most superficial level, this is a wonderful yarn, with echoes of Bonnie and Clyde but very far from a predictable remake. It is extremely well written and brilliant in its subtle restraint, and, within its short compass, an endless mine of historical detail into life in South Germany and Switzerland in the 1930s - the unemployment, the political discontent, and, not the least fascinating, the changes undergone in the traditional Swiss social fabric. In fact, the author's Swiss grandparents were among those concerned. Marie, his grandmother, worked in the same department store, Globus, as Dorly, walked arm-in-arm with Kurt on their evening promenades, was captivated by his charm and sympathetic way with women yet, once the pair were unmasked, knew that she must marry that dull stick the author's grandfather, if only to save her reputation. The book will work extremely well for English-speaking readers. The bleak rituals of Nazism, the manner in which it managed to permeate the recesses of Swiss as well as German society, are fascinating on any level and all the more effective for being portrayed without preaching. Some strange things, moreover, are now reported to have occurred since the book's original publication in German - but that is another story. Quite enough to go on with here.