A Trace of Noir :: Rebecca Cantrell on Her 'Hannah Vogel' Mysteries

With "A Trace of Smoke," Rebecca Cantrell introduced readers to Hannah Vogel, a woman crime reporter working under a male pseudonym in 1930s Berlin. The end of the Weimar Republic looms, and the Nazis are a very dark, very close cloud on the horizon. When Hannah's gay younger brother turns up dead, his ties to a prominent Nazi, Ernst R�hm, come to Hannah's attention as she sets about trying to uncover the truth about his murder, and about the small boy who might be her nephew... or who might become R�hm's ace in fending off rumors of homosexuality.

Though Cantrell had not intended for "A Trace of Smoke" to turn into a series, the novel's strong writing and faultless evocation of place and time, as well as its protagonist's compelling mix of sensitivity and courage, made the prospect of further installments irresistible to readers. Cantrell returned to the world of Hannah Vogel with "A Night of Long Knives." Hannah has fled to Switzerland and now lives under an assumed name; R�hm's villainy traps Hannah in Germany once again, with her adopted son, Anton, a pawn in a deadly political maelstrom.

Cantrell's new novel in the series, "A Game of Lies," completes what the novelist says is a "pre-war" trilogy, and sets the stage for a wartime follow-up, due out next year. As is the case with the earlier novels, "A Game of Lies" finds Hannah in Germany -- intentionally this time, to cover the 1936 Summer Olympics, though still under an assumed identity -- when she becomes embroiled in a mystery: Her old friend Peter Weill dies under suspicious circumstances. Hannah is now part of an underground railroad for information, helping to funnel Hitler's secrets to the wider world. Weill, knowing this, has made plans to entrust her with an explosive revelation, but figuring out the clues he's left behind might lead Hannah to her death.

That's not an acceptable prospect to suitor and fellow underground member Lars Lang, who himself is a highly placed Nazi official. Lang's reluctance to allow Hannah to investigate as she sees fit only complicates an already perilous undertaking -- but Hannah, being on the trail, will not be swayed or slowed down. Step by step, and bruise by bruise, the book's increasingly battered heroine eludes Nazi pursuers, works her contacts in the criminal and political; undergrounds, and navigates an increasingly complex relationship with a man who might be her protector -- or who might be cunningly directing her every move for reasons of his own.

Rebecca Cantrell spoke with EDGE recently about Hannah's unfailing ability to throw herself into harm's way, the intersection of real people from history and her elaborately plotted adventures, and the art of re-creating a world now vanished.

Of great interest to EDGE, of course, was Cantrell's choice to bring gay characters into her novels. Hannah's dead brother haunts her thoughts, and her conscience, but among the recurring characters there's another young gay man -- once her brother's lover -- who has now adopted the protective camouflage of the Nazis.

"We think our parents didn't have sex, and we think nobody really had sex before 1960 and nobody was ever gay before 1965," Cantrell told EDGE. "But the fact remains that that just isn't true, and if you do some research into Weimar, you'll find that there was a thriving culture, or subculture, of gays.

"There were gay bars, there were more gay magazines in Weimar in the 1920s than there were in New York in the 1970s," Cantrell points out. "There were petitions for gay rights; there were a lot of clubs; there were a lot of people who were very open about their sexuality. And, obviously, that came to an end. Unfortunately, those petitions were used to round people up later.

"When I lived in Berlin it was the 1980s and the wall was still up," Cantrell, who now resides in Hawaii, recounted. "I had a gay host brother, the same age as me; we were in the same year in school. And we would go off and go clubbing, and there were some clubs that were gay-straight clubs, so we would go there. He would go and dance with his guys, I would go and dance with my guys, and at the end of the night we would take the bus home.

"When the following spring I went to Dachau, and I saw the ruins of the camp and I saw the pink triangles, I realized that, at that [earlier] point in history, what we had been doing would have been enough to send my host brother to a concentration camp. I was really just shocked and sad.

"I wasn't ignorant," Cantrell added. "I was a fairly smart teenager, and I had read about the Holocaust, so I knew some stuff. But in the '80s there really was very little information out there about the fact that the Nazis had killed gays or people they said were gays; they weren't necessarily all gay [simply because they were accused of homosexuality for political purposes].

"I did a little research after that and found out that when we freed the camps, we sent the gays back to jail," Cantrell continued. "If you were in a concentration camp for being gay, you went straight back into prison [once the camps were liberated by the Allies]. And that was us! That was the Americans! That was a big eye-opener for me. There had been this whole world, and it had come crashing down.

"I knew that I wanted to show that," the novelist added. "I think a lot of what Hannah does is show things to us. She sees a lot things that aren't necessarily a big part of popular history, but that were there."

Cantrell's books are striking for the meticulous level of detail they contain about life in Germany in the 1930s. She attributed that enormous amount of detail to one thing: "Work!

"Lots and lots of research," Cantrell added with a laugh. "The good thing is there were a lot of people living in Berlin at the time who wrote extensive diaries or letters, and a lot of that stuff was published in the '60s and '70s, and some of it's coming out again today.

For example, Count Harry Kessler was a member of the nobility, and he was communist, and he was gay, and he was a member of the diplomatic corps, so he was part of various negotiations," Cantrell told EDGE, adding that Kessler was "also the first German minister to Poland after the [first world] war and was responsible for the peaceful withdrawal of 100K+ troops from the Eastern front. It did not go well," the novelist added, dryly.

"He knew everybody," Cantrell added. "If you read his diary, it's like a Who's Who of everybody in Europe. He had everybody at his parties, from Einstein to Josephine Baker. A lot of thinkers and writers and artists came to his house. He chronicled everything that was going on. He would go out and explore stuff."

Stuff?

"When the Spartacists were trying to take over Berlin in 1918, at the end of the war, and there were troops out and there were police and protestors and they were shooting each other, he would just walk down and see what was going on," Cantrell explained. "And write about it!"

History... and Her Story

"Bella Fromm, who is in two of the books, was a real person," Cantrell continued. "She was also a member of the aristocracy who was Jewish, but was really tied in to the diplomatic community. She lost all her money in 1923, like most people, and worked as a society columnist. She had very close friends among the American ambassadors and French ambassadors and Japanese ambassadors, so the Germans had to be careful about how they treated her. She kept a very detailed account of what was going on."

One of the more intriguing characters in the novels is Sefton Delmer, a British reporter with an eye for the ladies who plays a key role in "A Night of Long Knives."

"His diary 'A Counterfeit Spy' is great reading, if you can get it," Cantrell enthused. "[The book] a wonderful anecdote about him suggesting that Ian Fleming eat a packet of condoms. Really, you have to read it to get the context. Very British." And, it must be noted, very much in keeping with the character that Cantrell presents to us.

"There are huge amounts of information out there, and nowadays, with the Internet, it's amazing what you can find," Cantrell added. "People will post old family photos from the '20s and '30s." Another invaluable source: "YouTube videos of vacations taken in, like, 1935 in Berlin. You can really see what people wore and what the cars looked like. There's even some 1936 footage that's in color, so you see there's a lot of powder blue cars, which I had not expected!"

Noir mysteries have several recognizable conventions, among them that the detective is beaten up a few times over the course of solving the case. Hannah Vogel might not be the typical hard-bitten gumshoe -- for one thing, she's a woman, and a beautiful woman at that -- but her adventures do take a physical toll, with Hannah being knocked around, shot, stabbed, and subjected to other physical insults. EDGE asked whether Cantrell was writing a sort of historical noir with her novels.

"It's definitely dark," Cantrell allowed. "It's noir in the sense that a lot of people aren't going to come to a good end. Millions of people died, and no matter what I write, that's definitely part of the context for the setting of the books.

"Hannah does get beaten up a lot, but I think also reflects what's happening to her psychologically. By the end of 'A Game of Lies,' she's actually killed someone -- and that's something that we have characters do in books a lot. In a lot of mystery series, detectives are little better than Dexter. They're serial killers who go out and kill a bad guy in every book.

"I didn't want to do that with Hannah, but at some point she does have to defend herself, and I wanted to show in this book, and in subsequent books, that there's a cost for that," Cantrell went on. "I don't think you can just happily take human life. Some people can, but certainly Hannah can't."

Another hallmark of detective fiction that Hannah shares is an inescapable tendency to throw herself onto the path of most resistance -- and greatest risk.

"I think some of it is her reporter's instinct, but I think some of it is that Hannah has a very strong sense of justice, and a desire to help the oppressed," Cantrell noted. "As the books go on, what she did or didn't do in each book weighs on her. In 'A Trace of Smoke,' the things she didn't do to protect her brother from their father when he was a child haunt her. I think she's trying not to do that again, no matter what the costs are."

By the end of "A Game of Lies," Cantrell seems to have a plan in mind for how the series will progress. She would have to; each book builds realistically on the previous novels, which means that Cantrell must keep track of countless details.

"I have a vague series mapped out," Cantrell acknowledges. "I can describe it in a sentence, but I don't have any great detail on the books yet.

"I want to do nine," the author adds. "A pre-war trilogy, which is the one you've read, and then a war trilogy, which starts with the next book, which I just finished writing. It's called 'A City of Broken Glass,' and that takes place during Kristallnacht, which I would argue is the beginning of the full-scale war against the Jews, if not the beginning of armed hostility of nation against nation.

"And then I want to do one set in Palestine in 1942, where Hannah is smuggling Jewish children to safety during the war," Cantrell disclosed. "I want to do on in 1945, where she goes in with American troops during Operation Paperclip, which is this thing where we went in and kidnapped German scientists and brought them to the United States.

"And then I have another three that I want to do after the war, and then I think I'm done."

Oh? And that's all? EDGE's head was spinning just hearing it in thumbnail form. If the story thus far has been wild, the track up ahead would seem to promise an even more twisted, more devilishly complicated, and more daring thrill ride. The only question to pose on the heels of hearing even that much of Cantrell's master plan was whether Hollywood -- seemingly ever more in the market for multi-part sagas that blend exotic settings with fast-paced adventure -- might already have come calling.

"There has been considerable interest so far, but no bites," Cantrell told EDGE. "I think it's partially because Hannah is one of very few women in stories set in this era. We've read a lot about men, but obviously, half of the world is female, and half of the people in Nazi Germany were women. There are very few stories about it and very few mystery stories at all."

Each book in the series offers a compelling mix of recurring characters and newly introduced ones -- friends, colleagues, and sometimes enemies with whom Hannah has long associations. It makes sense that a reporter in Berlin would have an extensive circle of friends and contacts, but knowing how and when to deploy (and, at times, retire) those acquaintances is a something for which Cantrell shows a well-calibrated talent. Add to that the fact that the books take place over a span of years, and the task is all the harder: Hannah changes over time, and so do the various recurring characters.

"When I first started, I didn't intend it to be a series," Cantrell recalled. "If I had, I would have made different decisions -- I would have killed different people!" she added, with a laugh.

"As the series continues it's harder and harder, because there are more and more people I need to drag along, and more people I need to introduce in every book," the novelist noted, calling the challenge "interesting."

"Part of what I'm trying to do is see how people change," explained the author. "Like the character of Wilhelm: He's just a teenager, he's screwing around in the first book, but by the second book he's starting to realize he's in trouble. By the third book, he's in a sham marriage because he knows the alternatives are horrible. By the fourth book, he's kind of realized that it's really wrong: It's not just as game, there are consequences.

"Or Bettina," Cantrell adds, referring to an old friend of Hannah's who puts in regular appearances as the books progress. "[She] starts out as this really nice homemaker, and you see her changing as she's exposed to more and more of the propaganda. It happened. People who were good people would change. That's what propaganda does; that's what fear does."

Not to everybody, though. Not, in any case, to Hannah Vogel.

"A Game of Lies," published by Forge Books, is out now in hardcover. Pages: 320. Price: $24.99. ISBN-13: ISBN-13: 978-0-765-327-338.