Set during the frigid Berlin winter of 1946, Vyleta's wily debut follows the exploits of an American GI, a German street urchin and an enigmatic prostitute as they struggle to survive both the cold and the looming Cold War. Pavel Richter, an American soldier who remained in Berlin after the war, is shocked when his friend Boyd White shows up at his door with a dead German midget. After agreeing to help Boyd hide the body, Pavel and his friend Anders are thrust into the middle of a conspiracy that runs deeper than they could ever imagine. Boyd soon turns up dead, and Pavel and Anders discover that the midget, Söldmann, was a spy for the occupying Russians and was set to deliver a mysterious package on the night of his death. Boyd's and Söldmann's deaths arouse the interest of Pavel's upstairs neighbors, the nefarious British Colonel Fosko and his prostitute companion, Sonia, who join the Russians and Germans in the hunt for Söldmann's lost loot, and Pavel finds himself falling in love with Sonia. Despite an overabundance of minor characters and a conclusion that isn't exactly surprising, Vyleta conjures a convincing postwar Berlin in all of its moral ambiguity. (Feb.)
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The son of Czech refugees who immigrated to Germany in the late 1960s, Berlin-based Vyleta sets his debut in Berlin in the terrible winter of 1946-47. His narrator Petersen, the "I" of the title, is a freelance torturer for an obese British colonel named Fosko. When an American grifter dumps the body of a dead midget on Pavel Richter and is killed soon after, Pavel attracts the attention of the colonel. Apparently, the midget was a spy for General Karpov of the Soviet NKVD (secret police) and had in his possession "merchandise" of interest to all. But just who is Pavel? He appears to be simply an ex-GI, an American who abandoned his wife in the States and lives in squalid conditions with Anders, a 12-year-old orphan. Pavel, a quiet scholar at heart, and Anders are soon forced to turn for help to Sonia, a prostitute who has just moved in upstairs. In the midst of these entangled lives and against a noirish backdrop of starvation and ghastly cold lies many a mystery. But the mysteries themselves-and the details of plot-are far less interesting than the characters, whose unusual lives are explored with masterful depth. Recommended for larger public libraries.
—Ron Terpening
A messy, over-the-top thriller set in postwar Berlin. A pimp, a whore, a midget and a soldier in a mink coat propel the plot of this first novel from Cambridge-educated Vyleta. The soldier is an epicene brute, a grotesquely fat British colonel called Fosko; he has a secret fact-gathering operation and uses torture. He gets wind of a wily German midget, Soldmann, who trades information on the black market and frequents a brothel run by an American, Boyd. Fosko, promising a British passport, induces a desperate young German woman, Sonia, to go work for Boyd and spy on the midget. Soldmann does indeed have an immensely valuable microfilm. Fosko has him killed. Boyd dumps the dead midget on his best friend, Pavel; soon after Fosko has Boyd tortured and killed, but the microfilm is missing. Thus Pavel enters the story. He claims he's an American citizen, son of a German-Jewish father and a Russian mother, but who knows for sure? He's an enigma, a gentle man who kills ruthlessly when he must and inspires devotion. Sonia the whore, who by now is Fosko's mistress and living next door, falls for him big time. So does Anders, the young gang member looking for a surrogate father. Even Peterson, Fosko's one-eyed torture guy and the "I" of the title, comes to love him like a brother. All this happens around Christmas 1946. Berlin is bitter cold. Its poverty is abject. Underneath their tough-guy exteriors, Vyleta's characters are quietly weepy, except for Fosko, who sings a Christmas carol as he strips a Russian corpse (the Russkis want that microfilm too); the man is so vile you know the author has a horrible end planned for him. The story, clumsily told, moves in fits and starts, doubles back onitself and switches viewpoints recklessly, bringing us no closer to understanding Pavel. Pretentious and silly. Agent: Simon Lipskar/Writers House LLC
DAN VYLETA'S PAVEL & I (Bloomsbury, $24.95) has plenty of plot (including a dead midget in a suitcase), a crowd of desperate characters (including a whore with a heart of tarnished gold) and an unusual narrative scheme—but most of all, it has atmosphere, a vividly rendered time and place: Berlin in the frigid winter of 1946-47, rubble, starvation and no brakes on anyone's instinct for self-preservation.” —Adam Begley, New York Observer
“Pavel and I, (Bloomsbury, 344 pp., $24.95), a debut by Dan Vyleta, spools out moodily in post-World War II Berlin. Pavel Richter, who worked for the Americans during the war, now suffers from poverty and a painful kidney infection. He nurses a hopeless love for Sonia, the prostitute downstairs. He carries on an odd friendship with a young urchin who knows too many secrets. When an American friend, Boyd White, mysteriously appears in Pavel's coldwater flat to deliver a dead Russian dwarf's body for safekeeping, things get a lot worse. White ends up tortured and killed, and Pavel is cornered by a government interrogator. Their relationship evolves into a kind of Stockholm Syndrome, where the two men - on bitter, opposite sides - develop a mutual affection that fails to soften the menace of their sessions together. The novel is grotesque, sometimes funny, and completely chilling, a wonderful re-creation of the Europe of 1946. Dan Vyleta is a name to watch.” —Les Roberts, Cleveland Plain Dealer
“Impressive...There is a lot to admire about Pavel & I. As a thriller, it is highly admirable. Like most mysteries, literary and cinematic, this one grows complex nearly to the point of irritation; but unlike most, this one is entirely logical, and every dead body is accounted for...Readers in search of a good story will find one here.” —Roger K. Miller, Denver Post
“A tremendous first novel that will gather accolades like shards of broken glass littering the once-fashionable Kurfurstendamm. PAVEL AND I is not to be missed.” —Bill Webb, I Love a Mystery
