World War Two fiction is having a moment. A very long moment. And why not? It was an epic conflict pitting good versus evil with so many stories that have unimaginably high stakes. But what about the post-war period when the treaties have been signed, everyone is back home with family and the world asks, “Now what?” Mysteries and thrillers set in the period ranging from 1945 until the Cuban Missile Crisis are rife with drama too, but the world they exist in is decidedly gray.
Look no further than film noir to help define this period. The crime films we now call noir reached their zenith in the post-war era, as men returned home to find that women had been holding down the fort and were reluctant to give up their wartime autonomy. Noir depicts a world in which men and women are at odds with one another as they negotiate a new era with new rules. Throw in a lot of bad choices and a criminal element, and you have an artistic movement that still fascinates (and still reveals much about its time).
The same is true on the international front. During the war the enemy wore uniforms. But afterward new lines of demarcation began to be drawn. Europe started rebuilding while the battle of East vs. West was being fought in the shadows. The post-war landscape was rife with double-crosses and uneasy alliances. As spies hid in the shadows, criminals lurked in the background seeking to profit from the confusion.
The best cinematic example of this dark chaotic time is Carol Reed’s classic film The Third Man. Boasting a script by Graham Greene, the movie takes place in post-war Vienna and stars Orson Welles and his Mercury Theatre cohort Joseph Cotton. Look no further than the famous “entrance” of Welles’ character Harry Lime to feel that post-war noir vibe. Cotton’s writer character Holly Martins looks lost in the shadowy cobblestone streets accompanied by the film’s haunting, jaunty zither theme Then he hears a cat meowing in a doorway. A flash of light for only a moment, and Lime’s face is there—smiling, enigmatic. But when Martins looks for him, he’s gone.
So, put on Anton Karas’ Third Man soundtrack and immerse yourself in these murky Cold war thrillers by some of the best writers in the genre.
Istanbul Passage, Joseph Kanon
We begin with the current master of the post-war thriller. Through several novels including Leaving Berlin, Defectors and his most recent, The Accomplice, Kanon has thoroughly mined this morally ambiguous period in history. Istanbul Passage is as dark as a foggy night on the Bosphorus. Kanon begins the story in 1945 when Istanbul is a virtual melting pot of refugees from every country involved in the war. Leon Bauer, Kanon’s protagonist, has one final job—to bring in Alexei, a Romanian defector with Russian secrets. Hard moral choices dominate the world of the post-war thriller and Bauer will have to make a doozy.
Then We Take Berlin, John Lawton
Lawton is probably best known for his Inspector Troy novels, a series of historical mysteries that span the war years and beyond. Old Flames is set in 1956 and sets up Troy as defacto tour guide for Soviet premier Nikita Khruschev’s visit to Great Britain. In Friends and Traitors Troy encounters real-life British spy turned Soviet agent Guy Burgess. Then We take Berlin introduces a new protagonist, Joe Wildeness, an East London-born burglar who is sent to post-war Berlin by MI6. His job is to interrogate former Nazis, but he gets involved in a black-market operation alongside a U.S. soldier and a Russian spy. That can’t end well, can it? The action bounces around from 1941 to post-war Berlin and to 1963 on the eve of President Kennedy’s visit to Berlin. Lawton has penned two more Wilderness novels, The Unfortunate Englishman and Hammer to Fall, which will be released in March.
The Secrets We Kept, Lara Prescott
Prescott’s debut spans the post-war period from 1949 through ’61. The book’s opening chapter gives us an inside look at the CIA secretarial pool, which features real-life WW2 American spy Virginia Hill, who worked undercover in France with a wooden leg she called Cuthbert. That group of women play an important role as the story develops. Prescott’s narrative focuses on the real-life attempt by the Agency to smuggle a copy of Dr. Zhivago out of the Soviet Union.
The Other Side of Silence, Philip Kerr
It doesn’t get much more noir than the late Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series. Most of Kerr’s Gunther stories put Bernie reluctantly at the beck-and-call of such infamous Nazis as Joseph Goebbels and Reinhard Heydrich. Kerr’s later novels brought his German detective into the 1950s where he often found himself entangled with East and West spy agencies. Here, Bernie is working as a concierge on the French Riviera, but pretty soon he encounters tough customers including British spies, Markus Wolf, the notorious leader of the East German Stasi and, naturally, a beautiful woman. Kerr’s books simmer with uneasy alliances and sudden betrayal. No one navigates moral minefields quite like the brooding, sardonic Gunther.
Shamus Dust, Janet Roger
Hard Winter. Cold War. Cool Murder. The tag line for Roger’s debut is very apt. Set during London’s bitter winter of 1947, an American private detective, Mr. Newman, is called to investigates the murder of a pimp found dead in a church. The victim’s death and his chosen profession implicate those a little higher in the social stratosphere. Suspects pile up quickly in this hardboiled whodunit. But it’s the atmosphere of a frozen London, still deeply scarred by the war, which permeates every page.
The Quiet American, Graham Greene
This list wouldn’t be complete without at least one of Greene’s novels, and this one fits the post-war malaise perfectly. Set in the Vietnam of 1955 before the war blew up in everyone’s faces it is, at its heart, a love triangle between a British journalist, a young Vietnamese woman and a seemingly idealistic American named Alden Pyle. To say this novel is just a love story is to say Greene was just a writer. Over the course of the short novel friendships harden and lovers become enemies as the struggle for a woman mirrors the fight for western influence in an entire region. This book exemplifies the post-war thriller as allies try to expand their footprint in a world where you can’t quite tell who is on whose side.
