Book Review: Five Things I Enjoyed in Joseph Kanon's 'The Good German'

Well, the picture you see above is NOT from the book, it's the movie version of Joseph Kanon's The Good German.  I am now curious to see the movie since I have finally finished the book.  I am curious to see who plays the interesting characters in the movie, although I can gauge from this photo that George Clooney is Jake Geismar and Cate Blanchett, Lena.

Anyhow, here are the five things I liked about the book -

#1 The depiction of Berlin after the war - precise and sensual - you can almost smell and see and feel the place!  

#2 The musings about the war particularly on what ordinary Germans were doing since Lena, one of the main characters, was in fact, just an ordinary Berliner.

#3 The lesson that no one wins in a war.  Well, yes, the Allied forces won the war but in the book, Kanon writes it in a way that, well, no one wins in a war!

#4 The presence of many interesting characters - Jake Geismar, Lena, Emil Brandt, his Dad, Sikorsky, Gunther, Shaeffer, Liz, Lena's roommate....I could go on and on....

#5 Just the right amount of suspense that kept the story moving forward!