It is the first and also the darkest Band of the famous crime novels, the investigator Gereon Rath. An atmospheric moral image of Berlin in the 20s – illegal dance clubs, lots of drugs, and dead.
In 1929, the fate of wars of the year between the world. In the capital of the Reich Berlin, everything seems possible. The porn industry is booming, in illegal Clubs intoxicate the people with absinthe, and cocaine like there’s no Tomorrow. It was the last dance on the volcano, the dead, celebration of the Weimar Republic before the national socialists, signaling the darkest Chapter of German history.
Dance on the volcano
In such an atmosphere Commissioner Gereon Rath irrlichtert through Berlin. He has been transferred from the Cologne homicide to Vice to Berlin. A non-political “war trembler,” expresses his trauma with drugs and at the end of Service remains the same in the illegal night club that he should dig actually.
The economic crisis will plunge the country into misery. Hitler is Rath a “weird guy with the Charlie Chaplin Moustache who looked as humorless as Wilhelm zwo”.
Watch the Video 01:51 live Now 01:51 Min. 
DW-literature-expert Sabine Kieselbach on “The wet fish” by Volker Kutscher
Sex and Drugs
Volker Kutscher in his first Rath-crime Thriller the way of the approaching disaster. But Gereon Rath is not a Prophet of coming disaster, but even a prisoner of his time.
Volker coachman novel manuscript was initially rejected by many publishers
In order to impress Charlotte, a stenographer, in which he is in love, he begins surreptitiously to investigate a murder case. And in devil’s kitchen. Suddenly, he has a dead account.
Russian of noble family, a criminal ring clubs and tons of loads of Gold later to play a role. Volker Kutscher creates a detailed Panorama of this vibrant time. The local editor from the Rhineland could have not have imagined what the success would give him his Gereon-Rath-thrillers. With “The wet fish” – police jargon for an unsolved case – where it all started, in the meantime, five more volumes have been added.
Babylon Berlin
And an award-winning, all over the world-selling series called “Babylon Berlin”. The film version of driver detective novel was after the completion of the first season of 2017, is a global export hit. So meticulously coachmen of the 1920s, described as opulent and authentic Tom Tykwer has visualized the story and the viewer into the twenties: a city in the rush of Cocaine transferred to Berlin, a political powder keg, with the Communists and class struggle.
The adaptation of the novel by Tom Tykwer at a cost of around 40 million euros. The series has been in more than ten countries, sold from Sweden to the USA
Kutscher has created its Gereon-Rath-series, now in nine volumes – in the end, he is planning to have the date 9. November 1938. Will identify Rath, but from the police service, he will be dismissed. Apolitical, he does not remain so, that has betrayed its author already.
Volker Kutscher: “The wet fish” (2007), Kiepenheuer & Witsch Verlag
Volker Kutscher, 1962 in Lindlar was born, worked against his success as a crime writer and as the local editor of the “kölnische Rundschau”. In 2007, the first volume of his Gereon-Rath-series, 2017, the sixth, “Luna Park” was released.