Ruin Value: A Mystery of the Third Reich

By J, Sydney Jones

As Europe prepares for the Nuremberg trials, a killer stalks a broken city.

Nuremberg is a dead city. In the aftermath of World War II, two-thirds of its population has fled or is deceased, with thirty thousand bodies turning the ruined industrial center into a massive open grave. Here, the vilest war criminals in history will be tried. But in Nuremberg's dark streets and back alleys, chaos rules.

Captain Nathan Morgan is one of those charged with bringing order to the home of the war crime trials. A New York homicide detective who spent the war in Army intelligence, he was born to be a spy -- and now, in 1945, there is no finer place for his trade than Nuremberg. As the US grapples with the Soviets for postwar supremacy, a serial murderer targets the occupying forces. Nathan Morgan may be the perfect spy, but it's time for him to turn cop once more.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Head of Zeus
• Release date: Jun 1, 2014
• ISBN: 9781784085896

J, Sydney Jones

J. Sydney Jones is the author of fifteen books, including the critically acclaimed Viennese Mystery series. A long-time resident of Vienna, he currently lives near Santa Cruz, California.

Reviews for Ruin Value

[ecw0647 · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

It’s just after the war and before the Nuremberg trials. The werwolves ( young boys indoctrinated by the SS to wreak havoc on the Allies through sabotage and murder, operating as quasi-commandos after the war) were giving grief to supply officers. A Thriving Black Market A unique combination of characters: Former Chief Inspector Beck is in a POW camp, Kate, is an American journalist whose father is an important senator, Colonel Jensen is a lecherous officer trying to maintain supply lines, and Captain Nathan Morgan, a former OSS espionage agent and ex- NY homicide detective who springs Beck from jail to gain his assistance in finding out who has been killing people by slitting their throats and leaving a page from a novel behind with certain words underlined. But the investigators don’t have exactly clean hands either. Lots of grays.Let us say, then, that my Gestapo colleagues and I had a falling out over who was really in charge of criminal investigations in the Nuremberg district. That argument manifested itself specifically and, finally, in a needless and idiotic order. I refused to institute it at Kripo; ergo, I was a political criminal.” “The order?” Beck hesitated, blew air out, shrugged. “To shoot on sight any Jew caught in the district after the final transports had been sent to the occupied territories. It seemed a senseless piece of cruelty. Those people would be sent to their deaths once captured anyway. Why make my Kripo personnel complicit in their murder?” The American officer was silent, staring at Beck with those innocent but not so innocent eyes. “Not exactly what you wanted to hear, eh? Not exactly drawing a line in the sand for morality.” “So you admit knowledge of the death camps?” “Of course. All of Germany knew.Nuremberg had been declared a “dead” city by the Allies. For the trials it was perfect; for criminal, too.There was limited electricity, public water, or transport, and barely any mail or telephone to speak of in the several months after the end of the war. The local government was a joke, and the occupation authorities were the only thing between the city and total anarchy. Three months earlier, OSS analysts had declared the place among the dead cities of Europe. But the accident of a huge Palace of Justice complex, inexplicably untouched by Allied bombing that had leveled the rest of the inner city, made it the venue for the trial of the century. There was the further confusion of shared authority between the Allies themselves and between the Allies and the German police who had only started operating again last month; the complete absence of societal controls—women who would screw for an orange, displaced men who’d murder for less; a lack of records to track known criminals. A cop’s nightmare.An excellent murder mystery set in an interesting location during an intriguing historical time period.

[druidgirl_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

This book was set in Nuremberg,Germany during the famous trials of Nazi war criminals. There is no control over the city , the criminals run wild and the prostitutes are all over the bombed out buildings. The security teams are extremely nervous because there is someone killing GI's in a very horrific way, which brings Nate Morgan, aka Nathan Morgenstern. He is a member of the OSS which has been disbanded by the president. Colonel Geoffrey Adams brings him in to catch the murderer, he thinks he has Col. Adams full support but in truth he does not.This is a well written suspenseful book and the characters are well developed. I highly recommend this book.*** This book was received free in return for an honest review***

[kara.shamy · Rating: 3 out of 5 stars]

As soon as I found out about Ruin Value I was eager to get ahold of a copy of it and begin reading. The singularly dramatic historical setting of the novel in the badly war-ravaged city of Nuremberg on the eve of the trials there for notorious Nazi war criminals coupled with a suspenseful story of a serial killer on the loose sounded like an altogether unbeatable plot to me.

The story was a very interesting one, but several aspects of the novel combined to create a less compelling and memorable reading experience than I had personally anticipated.

First off, the transitions in the story were rather abrupt; I can't say I saw evidence of the author's fine craftsmanship throughout the narrative. This may however be wholly attributable to the fact that I read an electronic advance galley of this novel on NetGalley by permission of the publisher.

Another feature of this book that ultimately turned me off -- but will no doubt be appealing to some other readers -- was the decidedly gritty tone of this mystery. For example, the novel opens with an entirely unsentimental -- in fact quite cold -- appraisal of the first character encountered by the reader. We learn of his counting compulsion, the habitual behavior it motivates, and the advantageous effect of that behavior on his efficacy in his job. We learn of his preferred currency, his prosperity, and his death. The description of the attack by the murdering villain is incredibly dry; the victim,a blood type and its clotting mechanisms are discussed rather than the victim's experience (of fear, physical pain, or any other subjective aspect. After the narrator describes the sadistic pleasure of the killer, the story moves on to an active interrogation of a German soldier by an American officer.

The most off putting quality of the storytelling in Ruin Value is its markedly masculine point of view. It's not just a masculine perspective at the center of the story--I found it to be downright alienating in its frequent sexual objectification of female characters according to my viewpoint.

Despite its drawbacks, this novel's storyline made it a worthwhile read for me in the end.

[bjmitch_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Ruin Value is subtitled "A Mystery of the Third Reich." Actually it is set in Nuremberg in 1945 as the world gathers in that bombed-out city for the Nazi War Crimes Trials. I had read Jones' earlier book, Time of the Wolf, a thriller set in Vienna, in 2012 so I knew that no one transports his readers to another time, another place better than he does. I wanted to know what Nuremberg was like in those momentous days, and that's what I got.It isn't only how real the setting becomes for me as I read though. He creates believable characters of every sort and there is a plot that is worthy of the setting. In this book I realized who the killer was early, which isn't normal for me, but that fact only added to the edge of your seat thrill of the story. There is a serial murderer in the streets of the city, striking every three days, and highlighting the history of the Nazi reign. The nationalities of the victims are appropriate to that event as well. We meet black marketers, displaced persons scrabbling to stay alive, Nazi holdouts eager to damage the victors in any way possible, along with the military, the press, the judicial presence - all gathering in one city.Most of the center of the city is composed of buildings in ruins. People live where they can, and outsiders there for the trials compete for decent accommodations. Our hero is an American cop who had been a spy during the war. He is assigned the task of stopping the killer, and he chooses as his partner a German cop he finds imprisoned. They are an odd couple but both focused on the same goal. I liked both of them immensely. The best developed character though was the killer. Jones has created a background for this person that lends understanding but still horrifies. I see on the back cover that J. Sydney Jones has written two more mysteries, again set in Vienna. Since he lived there for many years, these should be just as good as his others.Highly recommended.Source: Open Road Media

[lostinalibrary · Rating: 4 out of 5 stars]

"Ruin value (German: Ruinenwert) is the concept that a building be designed such that if it eventually collapsed, it would leave behind aesthetically pleasing ruins that would last far longer without any maintenance at all." - w/ thanks to Wikipedia Nuremberg, in November of 1945, is a city in ruins and the devastation is, for lack of a better word, awe-inspring. Buried under the rubble are thirty thousand bodies adding an unholy stench to the horror. It is a town surviving on corruption, where starving children roam the rubble for anything they can sell, where women prostitute themselves for a meal, and whispers of Nazi loyalists hiding in the burned-out building seeking a chance for revenge against the Allied victors are heard in every bar and cafe. It is also the setting for the war trials of the Nazi commanders. As the city fills with foreigners, Allied leaders, lawyers, and reporters, a killer is at work. Every three nights, someone is killed. Each victim is from one of the Allied nations and each seems to be linked to the Black Market very much alive and thriving in this destroyed city. Captain Nathan Morgan who had been a spy during the war and a NY homicide detective before it, is charged with solving these murders but it must be done in secrecy so as not to take away focus from the trials. When it becomes clear that he lacks the knowledge of the city and its people to do a thorough investigation, he has Beck, once a Kripo officer and now a prisoner, released to aid him. As the trials begin and the killer becomes more brazen, Morgan and Beck begin to fear that they are missing too many pieces of the puzzle to find him, especially as the killer starts targeting people involved in the investigation. Ruin Value is an engrossing mystery as the two detectives from opposite sides learn to trust and work together to solve the murders. There are plenty of twists and turns and, even when the murderer is made known to the reader, the suspense is rachetted up as the two must rush to stop even worse crimes.But more interesting than the mystery is the city itself. Albert Speers, architect and high-ranking Nazi, was an advocate of the theory of ruin value and Hitler supported it. It was their plan that the cities they built would eventually, even in ruins, be a testament to the greatness of the Third Reich. Nuremberg, in its ruins, was a testament to their failure.

[col2910_1 · Rating: 5 out of 5 stars]

Synopsis/blurb............Nuremberg is a dead city. In the aftermath of World War II, two-thirds of its population has fled or is deceased, with thirty thousand bodies turning the ruined industrial centre into a massive open grave. Here, the vilest war criminals in history will be tried. But in Nuremberg’s dark streets and back alleys, chaos rules.Captain Nathan Morgan is one of those charged with bringing order to the home of the war crime trials. A New York homicide detective who spent the war in Army intelligence, he was born to be a spy—and now, in 1945, there is no finer place for his trade than Nuremberg. As the US grapples with the Soviets for post-war supremacy, a serial murderer targets the occupying forces. Nathan Morgan may be the perfect spy, but it’s time for him to turn cop once more.This was another freebie book thanks to a Net Galley invite from Emma at Open Road Media/Mysterious Books and an offer I’m really happy I took advantage of.A historical murder mystery set in Nuremberg, Nazis about to appear on trial, Third Reich sympathisers and gangs still active in the ruins of a city nearly obliterated by Allied bombing, a local population living in squalor and deprivation, women reduced to prostitution to survive, corruption within the police force, an uneasy alliance between the disparate strands of the victors (East v West) and the vanquished, as the Allies struggle to get the city moving again and restore law and order to the streets, owned by night by black marketers and opportunists, whilst the unburied dead rot in the rubble. All this and more - with the back-drop of the biggest trial of the century looming near - and a deranged killer on the loose. I could almost taste the fear and dust and decay as I read it. Ruin Value is so far at least, the best book I have read this month, though ever the optimist with a week or so to go, it may be topped. Definitely a case of right book at the right time!The author has written several other mysteries though I know little about them. 5 from 5Thanks again to Emma at Open Road Media.