The Sleepwalker by Paul Grossman is a highly recommended novel

This novel is a great read.

It is set against the backdrop of Berlin in 1933 when the Weimar Republic came under control of Hitler and the Nazi Party.

Willi Kraus, a decorated World War I soldier, is an Inspector-Detektiv in the Berlin police department who happens to be Jewish. His two kids have been packed off to Paris with their rich grandparents and he is being urged to leave as well.

He can't leave as yet because he is drawn into solving a mysterious murder of a young women (whom he calls the mermaid) whose body is washed ashore on the Havel River. He discovers her legs to be deformed as a result of an operation performed on her.

Willi has a liason with a bootgirl (dominatrix prostitute) named Putzi. Together they realize a connection between a hypnotist with strong connections to the Nazis and the disappearance of beautiful sleepwalking ladies.

Despite the strong antisemitic atmosphere he must endure, Willi persists until he locates an early  concentration camp where the likes of Josef Mengele and other scientists are performing hideous experiments and burying hundreds of their innocents victims.

I invite my reader to connect all the dots in this well crafted story.

What made the novel so 'real' were cameo appearances by Himmler, Goebells, Mengele, Marlene Dietrich, General Von Hindenburg and Ernest Roehm.

In addition, the street scenes around  Berlin landmarks such as Alexanderplatz (with the Wertheim and Tietz department stores) are unforgettable:  "Up against the building, rows of beggars in little more than rags held out hats to passersby, many veterans of the Great War, legless, eyeless and noseless.
...The Great Depression had left three-quarters of a million Berliners unemployed. One man with all his worldly possessions packed in filthy cardboard boxes on his shoulders shuffled past with wide dead eyes. Another sleepwalker, Willi thought."

Grossman the author seems to imply that the bulk of German society was sleepwalking at the time. Willi is acting imperviously to the racial hostility directed to him as are the towns people who were denying the horrific odors being emitted from the concentration camp in their town.

Enjoy the novel.