Book I: March Violets, Chapters 1-9 Summary

Nazi Germany's capital city of Berlin is preparing for the Olympic Games, and government workers are busy dismantling anti-Jewish signs, so that the country will appear less objectionable to foreign visitors. Bernhard Gunther, a local private detective, is more concerned, however, with the loss of his secretary, Dagmarr Lehman, from whose wedding he has just returned. His evening will be a bit longer, moreover. Returning home, he is met by a lawyer who states that a client is in need of his services and wishes to see him immediately. Willing to lose some sleep for two hundred marks, Gunther is driven to the home of Doktor Hermann Six, a wealthy German industrialist. Six's daughter, Grete, and her husband Paul Pfarr, a lawyer working for the Department of the Interior, were recently murdered, their...