Award-winning author Joseph Kanon is internationally recognized, having published bestsellers, including The Good German, which was made into a film starring George Clooney and Cate Blanchett. With much acclaim, I picked up his latest spy thriller with great expectation. I was disappointed.

Leaving Berlin takes place in 1949 Berlin; the city divided by the Allies into Soviet, French, British and American sectors. In the East, the Soviets rule with an iron fist, grabbing people off the streets for small suspected infractions, friends turn into informants, and war-time concentration camps are turned into prisons for party dissenters.  At the center of the drama is Alex Meier, a Jewish German writer who was able to leave a concentration camp during the war after a payoff. 15 years later, after exile in America, he returns at the invitation of the new Soviet-backed German party to help form a cultural revival.