It is 1964 and preperations are underway in Berlin for the 75th birthday celebrations of Adolf Hitler. For it is indeed a very different Berlin to the one we know today - a city dominated by the huge triumphal arches and monolithic constructions of Hitlers architect Albert Speer, and the centre of a vast third Reich that spreads from the Rhine to the Urals under Hitler's thrall. Xavier March is a policeman in Berlin's criminal division. When an old man's body is discovered drowned, March begins a routine investigation which rapidly becomes anything but routine. Ordered off the case by the Gestapo, his curiosity leads him through a maze of unexplained homicides, Swiss bank accounts, secret documents dating from the Second World War and finally to a terrible revelation burried in history. Brilliantly told, meticulously researched, boldly imagine, Fatherland is quite simply the thriller of the decade.