Stasi Child By David Young

I have not been doing much reading for the past few months. A couple of weeks ago, I happened to see Stasi Child by David Young in Popular Bookstore and it was on sale for only RM10. After reading the blurps on the back cover, I bought it as I was intrigued by its East Germany setting during the 1970s Cold War.

Stasi Child won the 2016 CWA Endeavour Historical Dagger for the best historical crime novel of the year and was also longlisted for the 2016 Theakston’s Old Peculier Crime Novel of the Year Award.

Stasi Child by David Young

Karin Müller, an Oberleutnant in the People’s Police, is tasked with investigating the death of a girl whose body was found in a cemetery near the Berlin Wall. The girl appeared to have been shot by guards in West Germany while trying to escape from the West to the East!

Upon arrival at the scene, Müller found out that she has been ordered to assist Klaus Jäger of the Ministry of State Security, or Stasi. Stasi is a secret police force whose mandate is to spy on the general population. To further their mandate they utilized a network of informants.

Jäger warns her that the investigation is limited to identifying the girl – not challenging the official version of the killing. The dead girl has been horribly mutilated to hide her identity making Müller’s task an arduous one.

Müller soon uncovers evidence contesting the official version of the killing and finds herself in a dilemma as she has ordered to focus on identifying the corpse rather than the killer. Müller disregards her order and soon finds her every step is watched and that there are powerful forces keen to ensure her investigation is not too successful. Even her husband is being used as a pawn to get her to fall in line.

Müller’s story eventually coincides with a first-person narrative told in the present tense by Irma Behrendt. Irma is an inmate held in a reform facility in the former Nazi holiday complex of Prora on the island of Rügen. Irma and her fellow inmates are living in a hellish condition and she is desperate to make an escape. Is she the dead girl whose murder Müller is investigating?

Stasi Child is a page-turning police procedural with intricate plotting. It is a story of corruption and lost innocence and the lengths people will go to fulfill their desires. Its bleak and chilling atmosphere lends itself well to the plot.

This is David Young’s debut novel and the first of a proposed trilogy. After reading it, I quickly went to Popular to buy Stasi Wolf, the second book in the trilogy.