Detective Inspector Nikolai Hoffner spent World War I hunting down murderers and thieves on the streets of Berlin. After the war as revolution swept Germany and bloody battles raged at the gates of police headquarters, Nikolai's focus remained solving crimes. Now that some sense of stability has descended on Berlin, Nikolai has a new murder to solve, but this time larger events are intruding on the simple world of murder investigation. A serial killer is on the loose in Berlin and he is leaving the intricately carved corpses of young women in the city's unfinished transit stations. One of the victims is Rosa Luxemburg, a leader of the socialist revolution. Is it a coincidence that she stumbled into the sights of a serial killer or was her death part of a larger plot and why has the Polpo (political police) whisked her body away?
Rosa is both an attempt at an historical novel and a mystery. Rosa Luxemburg was actually a socialist revolutionary whose body was found under mysterious circumstances in 1919. Rabb sprinkles the novel with a few other historical figures such as Albert Einstein and Dietrich Eckart (Hitler's mentor) and tries to give some feel for the unrest that surrounded post armistice Germany. However Rabb never succeeds in truly engulfing the reader in the times. His Berlin has the feel of a Hollywood set in which the facades of the city exist but there is no true depth to it. He mentions street and shop names but there is a great lack of verisimilitude to the place. Although set in a time of revolution there is never a great feeling of danger in the book beyond that of the danger of everyday crime. The revolution appears almost as distant in time to the characters of the novel as it is to the reader.
The book's failings as a historical novel could be forgiven if it succeeded as a mystery. Much of the book does succeed in proving Nikolai's skill as a detective and providing a complex set of clues to uncovering the true nature of the crime. However, as the story nears its end, Rabb fails in his efforts at creating a solid mystery novel. He even falls to the clichéd technique of having the arrogant criminal mastermind tricked into confessing his crime while boasting of how much smarter he is than his pursuer.
Rosa is not so much a bad novel as it is a disappointing one. There is a depth of history that is missing from a story that could provide such a rich opportunity for learning about a period in Germany that few know about. However it does provide for an entertaining mystery as a light summer read or for a long plane ride.
