(A Dr. Hoffmann crime novel)
Print Length: 260 pages
Publisher: Amazon
Crossing (August 6, 2013)
Sold by: Amazon Digital
Services
ASIN: B00AYJX6LM
In the Hoffmann crime series by
Christoph Spielberg, Dr. Felix Hoffmann is an emergency room physician at a
hospital in Berlin that serves patients who are neither remarkably wealthy or
utterly destitute. Some doctors he works with are boorish morons more concerned
with their own advancement and perks than their unfortunate patients. Others
are plodders struggling to survive in a remarkably bureaucratic milieu.
A few are dedicated
medical practitioners like Hoffman, doing their best to keep their patients
alive with little encouragement in an underfunded, understaffed and
underappreciated institution.
Spielberg writes about the
travails of a German doctor with authority and authenticity because he is one
himself: he works as a cardiologist in Berlin and has been on the staff of a
large hospital there. This is his fourth novel featuring Hoffman, a physician
who finds himself thrust into situations where he is forced to solve mysteries.
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| Christoph Spielberg (photo courtesy of Amazon.com) |
In Spielberg's first thriller, The
Russian Donation (January 2013), Hoffman is on call
when a sick Russian immigrant arrives for treatment and dies suddenly. Hoffmann discovers disappearing medical
records, an attempt to cover up the cause of death and a conspiracy involving
the Mafia. The book won the Glauser Prize, a prestigious award from the German
Crime Writers Association.
Spielberg's August 2013 novel, 101
Nights, opens with him in an airport to oversee the arrival of a casket
containing the corpse of his long-time
girlfriend, Celine, who died under mysterious circumstances in pre-invasion
Iraq. Hoffman has been told Celine was killed by an improvised bomb while
delivering humanitarian materials to Kurdish tribesmen. He
doesn't believe it and looks into how she died and why, but he gets the
run-around from the Iraqi embassy, which considers him a nuisance, and from the
German authorities, who consider him a supporter of terrorism and possible
bomb-thrower, himself.
The title, incidentally, refers
to the 101 Nights that have passed since Celine left Berlin and Hoffmann to
deliver her truck full of medical supplies and a water purification unit to
Kurdish Iraq. But it also is a play on One
Thousand and One Arabian Nights, the fanciful stories that Scheherazade
told the Shah of Persia in order to preserve her life. Most of what Hoffmann learns about Celine's death turns out to be fantasy, much
like the tales spun by Scheherazade.
Hoffman launches his own
investigation and finds himself under surveillance by real Iraqi terror
organizations, and by spies from the U.S., Germany and Hussein's Baghdad. He is
beaten up, followed, chased on foot and car, and treated like a pariah by Celine's
Old Leftist parents.
Meanwhile, he faces a corporate
takeover at his hospital, patients with recalcitrant illnesses, doctors with
secret agendas, shortages of medications and staff, and the sudden appearance
of what appears to be a poison gas generating device in the institution's
basement, part of Celine's shipment that was left behind.
The plot of 101 Nights is solid, with
no major plot holes or logical lapses to interfere with the mystery aspect of
the story. Most of the major characters
are believable. The book, which was originally in German but has been
translated to English by Spielberg with the assistance of Christina Henry de
Tessan, features dialog that is generally convincing and fits the speakers.
(Two Americans who show up in the course of the action exhibit some of the
weird diction that European and British authors seem to believe is common among
those from the United States, but they do not appear in the story long enough
for their syntactical quirks to become a major annoyance).
But 101 Nights is maddeningly
uneven in a variety of ways that keep me from completely endorsing it. Minor characters who appear in the book are
empty stereotypes: the dull-witted policemen; the officious but incompetent
corporate official who oversees a terrorism exercise and bungles it; the
empty-headed Kurdish rebels who seem too stupid to tie their shoes, let alone
manage an insurgency against Sadam Hussein; the vicious millionaire developer
who is engaged in smuggling weapons.
The quality of a thriller is partly
related to the credibility of its villains, and the villains in 101 Nights are
more annoying than menacing.
Speaking of annoying, the word
can occasionally be used to describe Dr. Hoffman, himself. For an amateur
sleuth, he often seems to miss very obvious clues. And as the protagonist and
lynchpin in the series, he occasionally acts in ways that seem utterly out of
character, not to mention stupid.
For example, the physician is
anything but heroic and knows that some of the people he is investigating pose
a real physical threat; yet he
repeatedly fails to take basic precautions to insure his own safety at key
spots in the book.
At one point, he starts out on a
dash to Egypt to try to find a key character, even though he has no idea what
to do once he gets there and strongly suspects he is under surveillance by
spies and terrorists. He ultimately scraps the plan at the last minute,
disrupting a major airport and drawing more attention to himself. The entire
sequence of events is fantastical and absurd, and fails to advance the novel's
plot in any meaningful way.
At another, he has a sexual
dalliance with one of Celine's best friends, even though he is supposed to be a
faithful fellow whose only female partner for many years has been Celine. The
reason is never adequately explained (too much wine is the feeble excuse
offered -- although alcohol, as any doctor knows, tends to suppress sexual
function). The episode makes him seem inconstant, lascivious and opportunistic.
These episodes undermine Hoffmann
as an everyman protagonist who is sympathetic to the reader. What's worse, they
make him appear to be an irritating twit; In her sociopathic antihero Tom
Ripley, Patricia Highsmith set forth the rule for getting away with an
unlikeable protagonist: make him such an immoral monster the reader can't bear
to look away; Felix Hoffmann doesn't make the cut. He simply comes across as a
jerk.
In my view, the best thing about 101
Nights was Spielberg's scathingly grim view of authority figures and
bureaucracy in general. People in
positions of power in this book are inept, evil or willing to endure villainy
for expediency's sake -- including some characters that seem honest and
supportive. Toward the end of the book, an obnoxious administrator is appointed
director of Hoffmann's hospital for political reasons, even though he is
clearly a charlatan with few skills and no intelligence. Yet Hoffmann, who is ostensibly a rebel who
speaks truth to power, passively accepts the situation. I find that kind of
cynicism refreshing.
I'd probably enjoy sitting down for a cup of coffee with
Dr. Spielberg. But Dr. Hoffman? Not so much.
