Plan D by Simon Urban

Plan D imagines a modern day East Germany in which the Berlin Wall never fell.  Trapped inside the socialist state, citizens are subject to the same close surveillance and limited goods present in the original German Democratic Republic. In Urban’s modern GDR the economy is in crisis and the state's future rests on energy consultations with the West. However the summit is jeopardised when a government official is discovered executed on the gas pipeline in the old Stasi style, arousing suspicion outside the wall that the state control of previous decades still holds. 

Plan D follows Detective Martin Wegener as he is tasked, along with a West German detective, to discover the murderer and clear the Stasi’s name. Wegener is a typical detective: lonely, world-weary and past his prime, but the plot is far from clichéd. After a slow start it offers fast paced revelations and twists that successfully harness the secrecy, surveillance and control of the old socialist state into a modern day thriller. Unfortunately, among the terror attacks and illicit meetings some of the many subplots aren’t brought to a satisfactory conclusion, but Plan D succeeds in providing an unnerving insight into life under a repressive regime. [Rowena McIntosh]