Cosy crime set in Berlin

Submitted: 12th January 2026

Cosy crime set in Berlin

Destination: Berlin

Clue is in the title really. haha

This is 1930s Berlin however and the author is a HUGH map fiend like me so this was the ultimate find and book to champion for Map Monday!

Location map of The Berlin Murders

berlin postcard

Location map of The Berlin Murders

The book:

I am Clara Vale in this book and a detective no doubt. It makes me giggle when I find out that I am going there to walk on a fashion runway! Now this will be a first. However, I remember that it’s the 1930s and that there are elections looming in Germany. It’s a very niche idea to go into a novel knowing what the other characters don’t.

Location map of The Berlin Murders

Fiona always draws a city so well and Berlin here really comes alive off the page. I could see the streets, the Nazi signs and feel the sense of fear as I walked around the streets. When there is a murder in the clothing factory we are in, there is fear everywhere. Not surprisingly, a Jew is blamed.

Well Clara – or me as I should say – was flung head first into a mystery and a crime to solve all the while trying to make sense of some of my colleagues whilst avoiding the attention of the Nazi government.

Cosy? well not really as there are some dark moments and themes here. Map and sense of place are second to none. Just thank goodness it’s in a book and not in real life.

BookTrail Map Monday

The setting

Nazi Germany is not somewhere I ever want to visit even if I could. I mean, the museums and Berlin sights are a must to understand the past but it’s only in a book would I want to visit the real thing. This book showed me what it would have been like and what women had to face, not to mention the Jews in particular. A great crime drama with a serious undertone.