‘The Good Nazi' is set in 1933. Hitler has become Chancellor of Germany and storm clouds are gathering over Europe. Most of the action takes place on board the transatlantic LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin in flight from Germany to Brazil.
Once in the air, one of the passengers dies in suspicious circumstances. As luck would have it, police detective Bruno Brückner is among the civilian crew. When Commander Eckener takes him into his confidence about the body in the lavatory, Brückner investigates the circumstances of the death and questions the other passengers. When it turns out that the murdered man may have been a Jewish homosexual who was using a false identity, and he was killed by arsenic, the mystery deepens as Brückner looks for motives.
Samir Machado de Machado's murder mystery novel is an enjoyable period tale that will keep the armchair detective entertained and guessing the secrets right to the end. The characters are broadly-painted but entertaining. At only just over 150 pages, ‘The Good Nazi' is a short book, and, with many twists and turns, driven by plot rather than character. It is a bit like an Agatha Christie ‘whodunnit', although the intriguing title is a riff on the device used by Michael Ondaatje for ‘The English Patient'.
The reader mostly gets to know the crew members through the sequence of interviews that Brückner conducts. In that way, the book is straightforward in its structure, as one person after another turns up to submit themselves for questioning. These sections are entertaining and thought-provoking because the characters reveal how ordinary people rationalise complicity with evil, and how dark sympathies can be masked by superficial charm. Once the Zeppelin comes in to land, and the secrets at the heart of the story come to light, we learn a lot more through backstory. I found that element a little disappointing. There are some great ideas at the heart of ‘The Good Nazi', but the exposition is heavy-handed.
It's easy to warm to ‘The Good Nazi' as its core moral is about the triumph of decency over fascism. Machado de Machado's prose is elegant and concise, ensuring every page is enjoyable to read. The book does successfully make its point about moral blindness. It is written with a fast pace, and the confined setting of the Zeppelin ensures a claustrophobic tightness is maintained. The book could perhaps have been stronger had its themes been more fully examined, and its exposition delivered through characters' actions.
Publisher: Pushkin Vertigo Publication date: 6th November 2025 Buy ‘The Good Nazi'
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