My Amazon Review of David Downing's "Union Station"

 Los Angeles-Berlin Axis

After years in Europe the Anglo-American journalist John Russell and his actor wife are now living in Los Angeles. This the eighth book of David Downing’s station series, with all of the prior stations being in Berlin from the late 1920’s to the late 1940’s.  (See: Shulmaven: My Amazon Review of David Downing's "Wedding Station")Russell is partially employed by a German newspaper and Effie has become a sitcom star on American TV.  Although their life in LA is of wine and roses, Russell gets caught up in a political corruption scandal and Effie is now facing issues with HUAC and the McCarthyism of the era.

 

All of the activity takes place in 1953, the year of Stalin’s death, the subsequent struggle for power in the Soviet Union and the anti-Soviet riots in Berlin. Russell’s journalism takes him back to Berlin to investigate a candidate for Congress and Effie is there for a film festival. There is much intrigue in Berlin with several border crossings between east and west as Russell meets up with old friends. Russell fears that Soviet spy chief Beria is out to get him because he possesses compromising evidence on him that would be useful to his Kremlin opponents.

 

Along the way we get a sense of the very segregated Los Angeles of that era and the growing controversy of what is to happen to the Chavez Ravine tract the city has acquired. The Dodgers would move in later in the decade.

 

Downing tells a good story, but to me his dislike for America gets harder and harder to take, especially at the end. He seems to ignore that 1953 was a great year for middle-class white Americans and the Russell family was doing quite well. Downing also throws in a gratuitous hit on Israel, just for good measure. However, once you get over his political biases, he writes a very fast-paced historical novel

 Los Angeles-Berlin Axis (amazon.com)