Pierre Frei Onkel Toms Hütte, Berlin (Death in Berlin) Karl Blessing Verlag, January 2004. 544 pp. ISBN 3-89667-250-9 The war is over, Berlin is in the hands of the Allies -- and a serial killer is on the loose. The victims are all women - young, blonde and beautiful. Operating at night, the killer tracks down his victims, strangling them with a chain before subjecting the corpses to horrific sexual abuse. The German and the American authorities are onto the case, but time is running out. The novel interlinks accounts of the investigation with extended flashbacks into the lives of the victims. There's Karin, the country-girl turned film-star who was wooed by Goebbels; Helga, who fought to protect her handicapped son from death at the hands of the Nazis; Henrietta, the aristocratic diplomat; and Marlene, the high-class prostitute who married a man who rose swiftly through the ranks of the Gestapo. The fifth target, Jutta, has an American lover who fears for her safety - she has already narrowly escaped one attack in the vicinity of Uncle Tom's Cabin, the underground station where the killer is thought to lurk. Will she be next on his list? At first, the killer is all but invisible - the sound of a motorbike, the glimpse of a helmet and the glint of some goggles. A figure emerges from the darkness, a chain is pulled around a throat, and a life is snuffed out. But why have these particular victims been chosen? And what is the link? There is plenty of incidental drama to supplement the main plot. Karin accidentally shops her closest advisor to the Gestapo; Helga murders a doctor who exterminated the mentally ill. Marlene joins the French resistance; Hitler appears; Bomber Harris's heavy planes drone overhead; and the Russian army steals and rapes. The killer's capture, as it finally draws near, is counterpointed with great ingenuity by the stages of a young blackmarketeer's attempt to buy a suit. Here is a lively debut thriller which vividly evokes life in Nazi Germany and postwar Berlin.