Fireweed

Hamburg, 1947. Adam is a young British lawyer is posted to the destroyed city to assist in the prosecution of Nazi war criminals, an exhausting, soul-destroying and demoralising task. He falls in love with a German prostitute during a time of strict anti-fraternisation rules. Rose is beautiful, educated, clever, witty ... and Adam becomes increasingly obsessed with her. Then a Nazi prisoner, responsible for the cold-blooded killing of hundreds of innocents, escapes while in Adam's custody. There is only one place for the desperate man to hide: in Hamburg's forbidden Dead Zone. And Adam is even more desperate to find him, no matter what the cost. At once an adventure, an unconventional love story and an examination of individual culpability in the face of historical horrors. The novel poses uncomfortable questions about ordinary Germans and their possible collusion in the atrocities committed in the name of the Fatherland, and whether people from other nations, in the same circumstances, would have behaved differently. Those of us who look back in time can only hope we will never be similarly tested.

Richard Vaughan Davies is the author of Fireweed and of In the Shadow of Shakespeare. Richard ran a business in Chester and North Wales for many years, which grew to become one of the leading independent menswear retailers in the UK. At one time he took a three-year sabbatical to read English and Italian at the University of Liverpool. He wrote a regular business column in the Liverpool Daily Post and also published a how-to book named Let's Talk Shop. He and his partner Barbara retired to the Cotswolds in 2007. This was partly in order to live near Stratford-upon-Avon to indulge Richard's love of Shakespeare, where he made the startling discoveries featured in In the Shadow of Shakespeare. He has three children: Zoe, Ric and Zanna.