The Watch - Ep. 132: Book Club — 'Zoo Station'

Episode Date: March 14, 2017

The Ringer's Chris Ryan and Andy Greenwald present their long-awaited installment of the Double Down Bookclub, as they review and discuss 'Zoo Station' by David Downing. Thank you to everyone who participated. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

Hey guys, this is a special episode of The Watch where we're talking about David Downing Zoo Station novel. It's the first episode of our Double Down Book Club. A lot of you have gone out and checked out Zoo Station and finished it, and that's great. This pod is the pod for you. If you haven't finished Zoo Station or you haven't even read it, I think you could still take a lot from the podcast. There's a lot of interesting discussion about espionage and crime fiction, the world we live in, the world we used to live in. So it's a pretty wide-ranging discussion with Andy here about the novel, but also about World War II and writing and reading. and reading and why we love books like this.

But by all means, you know, read Zoo Station and feel free to save this for that later time if you want, because we do discuss plot points, spoilers, characters, etc. At some point, I actually say that the Allies won World War II, and I apologize. I should have had a spoiler about spoilers. Without further ado, here is the first episode of the Double Down Book Club. It is David Downing Zoo Station. Me and Andy's conversation about it. I need supports to have to clear the room.

And walk now. Hello and welcome to The Watch. My name is Chris Ryan. I am an editor at the Rigger.com and joining me in the studio with the briefcase with the secret compartment. It's Andy Greenwald. Chris, you and I started this podcast five years ago.

Early on, weeks, relative weeks into it, we said, yeah, we should have a book club. Yeah, why not? We love to read books. We love reading books. And the Double Down Book Club was born. And it stayed in the crib.

Yeah. For about five years. It's a big baby now. There have been times we have suggested books that we were going to read. So waiting to get your feedback, your thoughts on Dennis Lehens Live By Night. You just let me know. Sure. Ask Affleck. We had a Tumblr, snitchbutlers.tlers.com where we wrote a little bit about Ross Thomas and James Crumley.

You're welcome to some mayor. And we never really did it. And then all of a sudden, some momentum started. And the momentum is finally paying off today because the first official selection. of the Double Downing Zoo Station was read by me. It was read by young Chris Ryan. And to our enormous joy and gratitude and surprise, it seems to have been read by a number of you guys.

That was very, very cool. And so we are very excited to talk to you about this book today. There will be spoilers because we were going to be doing this podcast. Yeah, this podcast is operating under the assumption that you have done your homework. That said, before you've done, got into it, get into it too much, we are going to talk a little bit about why we wanted to do this. Yeah, let's talk a little bit about Downing, and then we'll talk a little bit about spy fiction and crime fiction in general. Downing wrote this book in 2007, so we're coming up on

the 10-year anniversary of this novel. He's a British author who wrote, I believe he has two series. One is the main character of Zus Station. This is the first novel. There's six in total. And then he has another one that you said was set during World War I. He just started that one. I believe there are two books in that one. That's called a Jack of Spies. So he went from a character named John to a character named Jack, which might be the most British thing about it. I'm glad that this first one wasn't called John of spies, because I don't know if I would have gone with it. Instead, he named them after a series of increasingly obscure train stations, which is so British. Yeah, I know.

This book is about a journalist named John Russell living in Berlin in 1939 under the rise of Nazi Germany, not Nazism in Germany. that Hitler is in power. They are ramping up the war machine. There's a lot of talk about coming conflicts, a lot of incursions going on in Eastern Europe. And this guy is a British journalist living in Berlin who is more or less a freelancer, and he gets approached by the Russians to basically soften the image of Nazi Germany for the Russian people as a kind of stopgap method. How would you describe why he starts?

What's so great about the book is that it, and I'm well into the second book in the series as well, is that it's very, very much about countries trying to manage expectations when the end result was, I was going to say the end result is very much in doubt. That's not true. One of the amazing things about this book is that everybody knows there's going to be a war. Literally everyone knows. What they don't know is whose side everyone will be on and how it's going to shake out. So this was a time when there was a policy of appeasement in the UK.

There was a potential policy of appeasement in the Soviet Union. And there was an assumption that one of these countries would basically let the other two fight it out, that it would not end up the way it did, which is Germany isolated against everybody. And it was definitely, you can feel Russell's a World War I veteran. You can feel the collective exhaustion and wariness about conflict from a generation of people who have just fought a World War. Yeah. And one of the unique things about the book is Russell's, um, individual role in this world because, as you said, Chris, he's a British national, although his mother lives in New York, which comes into play later in the series.

He fought against Germany for England in World War I, and yet lives in Berlin, loves Berlin, loves the country, the city, not all of the people, clearly, but a lot of the people. The reason he stays is because his ex-wife, who is German, that he and she had a son, who is now just old enough to be in the Hitler youth. And she is married to, and she is remarried to a Nazi bureaucrat. And her brother is John Russell's best friend, and John has a girlfriend who is a actress, screen actress, who is who Goebel's likes, apparently. And that relationship becomes central to the book and to the series.

Her name is Effie. People think she looks Jewish, but isn't. Right. Well, the reason why we picked this book is that Andy and I, I have a long-running fascination with fiction set during World War II, and especially espionage fiction set during World War II. It is ironic, not ironically, but it is a strangely romantic genre of fiction, right? It is captures a world on the brink, a world kind of teetering on its own axis, not to put too fine much term on it. and these beautiful capitals of the continent that are beaten down, worn down by war, by poverty, by fear and anxiety, and at the same time have a certain, like, romance or energy to them.

And that's one of the things that Downing brings this out, Alan First brings this out, Philip Kerr brings this out in their novels about pre, during, and post-war Germany and Europe. is this incredible sense of romance, you know, and just an immersion in the food and the music and the cigarette smoke and the beaten down buildings and early subway cars and tram lines and everything that, where you just literally feel like you are, you can close your eyes and smell steam coming out of a restaurant. There's something incredibly transporting about it and seductive about a world where the stakes couldn't be higher for any of the characters or any of these places, but it's time of enormous transition where anything is possible and anything is changing.

Everything is changing. In terms of the romance, I would say that one of the things that helps us read books like this is that we know who won this war. The good guys won the war. Some of the characters in these books that we're talking about in these series don't survive. Terrible atrocities occur, obviously, either directly in the pages of these books or alluded to happening in the background. But in a way, it does allow us that sort of the indulgence of readership.

Because we kind of know how it turned out. Yeah. Now, the other point, why we love these sorts of books and why we love crime novels or whatever, it's sort of a tough word to call them crime novels. That's sort of the art. I think that would be the master genre of all of those. Right. These are spy novels. These are spy novels and they're espionage fiction.

The reason why we love books like this in general is I think there are few ways to know a place better than through noir or crime or thriller books written about the place. you know, we, I feel in many ways I've learned more about America that we live in from reading the books of George Pelicanos and Richard Price and more contemporary novelists, you know, because there's a very unique element. And some of these books are unfairly maligned as genre or whatever, but there's reportage in these books. There is respect in these books for all manners of humanity. And especially in a time, and this is, I'm painting with a very big brush here, in a time. in a time when the quote-unquote literary novel has not completely, but a large percentage of it has really become a kind of like MFA circle jerk, if I may. Like I am a white man who until recently lived in Brooklyn. I don't need more novels about me and my struggle.

I feel like there are plenty unless they're exceptionally well written. So much of the country is not written about. And that's why I say it's difficult to say crime novel because not all these things are about crimes. but they're about people in day-to-day situations. Yeah, and specifically with the World War II fiction, I'm going to be pretentious and paraphrase, Don the Lillo and Libra here. But when he wrote this book, Libra, about Oswald and the Kennedy assassination,

there's a line in there, and I can't remember it exactly. But it's something about, like, the goal of the character in this book is the collision of the individual and history. Yeah. And that's essentially what all of these books are. That's what Tinker Taylor Soldier Spy is. That's what Zou Station is. That's what Dark Star by Allen First is.

That's what all these books are about. The little ways that all these little little stories amount to D-Day. They amount to these massive historical movements that we see. And you can see that these novelists are often very smitten with people who should know better than to get involved, but do against their best interests, and at the end of the day, we're right to sacrifice everything to help others. Heroes.

Yeah, right. You know, it is a overused term, and it's a maligned term, but when you put ordinary people in extraordinary circumstances, particularly ones with such clear lines of good and evil as World War II, you can write about something like heroism, and you can write about it full-throatedly, you know, and celebrate people. Now, I mean, the interesting thing about what Downing does,

so we can start talking a little bit more specifically about Zustation, But, you know, Andy and I are huge fans of Allen First. It's F-U-R-S-T. Should we describe who this guy is? Yeah, Alan First is a writer who lives in Long Island, right? Yeah. And writes these incredibly evocative books about pre-enduring... All of them are set between 1938 and 1945, right?

He's now written over 10, probably 12, 14 books, all set in exactly the same six, seven-year period. And it's usually about a protagonist who is trying to quietly make... or living during these incredibly tumultuous times and get sucked into usually by one spy service or another, be a British or French or whoever, into the conflict and to work as a spy, more or less. Now, what happens now in first novels is it'll be a film producer or a journalist for Pravda or something, and they're living in France and they're just, they have a great girlfriend and they're smoking cigarettes.

And then next thing they know, you know, they are blowing up oil barges on the Danube. you know, and stopping like the German assaults. Also, and I mean this with nothing but love, adoration, respect for Alan First. Alan First, God bless him, kind of a schlobby guy, lives on Long Island, an older guy now, just like David Downing. Every one of his heroes is incredibly dashing, looks great in a tuxedo, and just lays pipe across Europe. I mean, let's be honest. Like, there's always, always like a Bulgarian heiress with a cigarette and a cigarette holder on one of those barges. And he just puts in work.

The heat check is that it's always like the protagonist is a guy who used to be handsome, but now his hair is thinning and he's been wearing the same overcoat for two years in a row. I mean, it's always... But he still got it. Yeah, he still got it. So there's a degree to which, you know, the jump that first protagonists take is into a deeper pool. So they wind up on boats that are trying to like fell German submarine stations in Sweden. Especially in his earlier books.

And they've gotten leaner. as he's gotten more prolific, I mean, the books have become, the early ones like... Night soldiers and Dark Star by first are like these tomes. Yeah, they're much bigger because, you know, you never know if you're going to get to write another one. And in a lot of those bigger ones, yeah, that you end up with these amazing set pieces, like in the Polish officer has one, you know, where there's just like a train collision is about to happen. Yeah, the evacuation of Warsaw and Polish officer, yeah. One of the things, a side note here that we're going to talk about in reference to why we like these series is one of the secret joys of a series like Alan First series.

is that they are low-key connected. There are five or six minor characters who reappear, and so it's just like a little wink to the fans that this is all one world, that all these crazy things are happening. And that just, we can pull that thread a little bit later, but that's another reason why we love this stuff. It's the same reason why we love serialized TV shows,

which is world-building. It's so exciting to think about the fact that these people might know each other and might cross-path. So Zoo Station and these Downing books differ from first, and you know what, you read it, And they're not altogether, if you did a taste test at the first few pages, you wouldn't necessarily be able to separate the two, especially the mid-period first stuff as he gets away from some of these characters

who are fighting in the Spanish Civil War, and then they're a D-Day, and then they're, like, in the same book. The way that Downing writes his story is almost like a newspaper story. You keep waiting for something really extraordinary to happen, and then you realize that it is happening, it just doesn't involve explosions or gunfights or anything else. The tense moments happen at customs checkpoints or at waiting for someone to arrive at a hotel room

or killing time at a cafe and noticing people on a sidewalk. But it's never a huge set piece, at least not in zoo station. I'll say it again, he's a very English writer, and I mean that as a huge compliment. It is an extremely understated book. And especially, you know, as you guys know, as you've read it now, much, we're talking about how you take these small slices of fictional lives and together they add up to history. That's not a bad metaphor for the way Downing writes either because, you know, you read the first few chapters of Zusation and you're like, am I reading a book or am I reading a Google map? Yeah.

Because there's such an outrageous level of specificity as to streets and whether it's faster to take the UBahn or later when he gets the car, like what highway he's going to go on, which cafe has the best, uh, potential. Hatta Berlin matches and, you know, really detailed, like, well, they were two and one away from home that year. And I read an interview with Downing. I was trying to find it before we did this podcast where, you know, he's been a writer. He's, I think he's 70 years old. Like, he's written 40 books, but many of them are, like, high school textbooks. He wrote a book about Prague Rock, called Future Rock.

Yeah, I saw that he used to be a rocker. He's an interesting guy. And I think in this interview, it said that he, someone asked him, like, oh, do you spend a lot of time in Berlin? And he's just like, no, I have maps. Yeah. So I'm sure he's been there, but he's creating something with a very different eye to detail that I think helps enormously because God does it put you right there. Yeah, it's basically, it's an acquired taste.

I think that especially when the book starts, like you're saying in those first few chapters. And it's like, this street, this street, this street. And you're like, I got it. He's like walking down the block, right? But it has a cumulative effect of a sense of place and understanding you can hide on one street and be caught on another street. You know, you could be somewhere where there is an SS office next to street market. Or, you know, and the proximity to danger is so incredibly close. Right.

You could be, he has his, you know, one of the things Downing does very well is he describes spaces. And when he just talks about John Russell's small room in the apartment house that he lives, you know, these little throwaway lines turn into the things that you fall in love with, fall in love with. Like when he comes home from a stressful day and he finds a warm bottle of beer that he's keeping on the shelf and he cracks the beer and he cracks the window, even though his landlady hates it, just to let some of the cooler air in.

And you're like, he's safe. Yeah. He's described a warm home place for him to be and to have his beer. And then you realize, thanks to his remarkable sense of direction, that the SS headquarters is not very far away. Those flags are ripping in that same breeze that he's feeling blow through his window, and it's all in the same city.

And there is, he has more escape than most people do, but because of family and because of love for his girlfriend in the city, he's not leaving either. Yeah, absolutely. Gosh, I'm trying to figure out. Well, let's think, talk a little bit about... Can we say a couple more things just about John Russell and why he works as a hero?

Sure. I was thinking about this. Like, what do you need? And I'm curious, I'm putting you on the spot here if you have anything else to add to the list. But here's what I think you need in a book like this. And obviously, Alan First has this down to a science, but La Carre probably does as well.

And many of the other people that we've mentioned and will mention as we keep doing this book club. You need someone placed in an extreme situation, obviously. This doesn't work if they're just in Des Moines, in 1974, unless maybe that was kind of a happening spot. What you need and what I love is when you are introduced to a character who has a certain level of competence or knowledge. Like my favorite kind of fiction in general are when we're following someone who knows how to pick locks.

I don't want to see that person learn how to pick locks. I like being in the hands of a master who knows how to do stuff. That's interesting that you put it that way. I wouldn't. What about Russell makes you... Well, what I mean is what he has, his competence is he just sort of knows how to move about his city. Sure.

He knows where he is. He knows how to maneuver in different scenarios. He's incredibly, if you read this book, I mean, Downing does a good job with the tension of each scene. But Russell, even after he's had a couple schnapps, is always incredibly glib and says just the right thing to each spy chief. He keeps every one of these many threads in line in a way that, you know, in a lesser writer's hands would almost be drama killing. But because, you know, we need him to be able to walk through these doors and walk, and also, talk his way out of those doors. Yeah, and I think that he gets involved with this family of the Wiseners as a tutor for the

daughters in this family. And that is what really sort of puts the emotional stakes on the table for him, along with the fate of his, I guess it's his nieces, his nephew, right? His ex-wife's sister who has a child who may or may not be autistic. Lothar? Yeah. And the Nazis at the time, there is a. possible plan for, I don't even know, like, for basically exterminating.

Euthanizing mentally challenged or differently-abled children as part of the final solution. And that's part of something that Russell comes across because an American journalist that he's sort of friendly with. I love that. They're not friends, that they're just sort of very coworker, is working on an expose about this because he's got some evidence that suggests that that's the case. one thing I think about Russell and I think works for a lot of these characters

although in some of the Le Carre books they're much more they hold themselves back a lot more Russell exposes himself sometimes judiciously and sometimes in a very risky way to multiple spy agencies to the Gestapo to the Russians he's a triple agent in the second book he's basically a quadruple agent British want him.

Yeah. So it's a dangerous game he's playing for sure. And I think that that's one quality I always look for in these characters, is there has to be just the right amount of recklessness. Exactly. They have to be willing to jump in. They also have to have an innate sense of skepticism about some entrenched power or some entrenched worldview.

There's also like a way in which, and this book is excellent at doing this, is this was a time period of incredible paranoia and anxiety. and to actually put a character in a place where they have every reason to believe that people are after them, that people are watching them, that they are under suspicion is incredibly effective because there was such an apparatus for surveillance and for persecution that it makes it the stakes that much higher. I think the final aspect of a great hero in these types of books is the hero has to have a very healthy appetite. And what I mean is for three things. for food, for drink, and for sex.

These are essential and pretty much universal, right? You knew that I was going to say this part, but like, I love specificity and food and drink in these books. You know, I love... Hot rolls and coffee. Those little details when he talks about, you know, he really is giving us a glimpse into this guy's life. And there's a chapter that begins while Paul is off doing his young Volk thing or whatever. So that meant, you know, a long morning in bed with Effie, which is the other part of our... Which is the other part of the character that we need to discuss.

but hot rolls and coffee, the potato salad, the Frankfurters that they eat, everything from a fancy dinner. So many onions. So many onions. You were pushing back on that. But, you know, from the smallest, most humble snack that he might get on a train to a fancy dinner that he treats himself to in Prague, I think, in the second book, which I hope people read, that gives you a real sense of place and a real sense of someone who is still able to take pleasure from the world in a world that is slowly rejecting pleasure. That's important, too. Yeah, I have to be completely honest. I mean, I think part of the problem, I mean, one of the things that I find in my life, as I, like, as the digital experience becomes more and more an undeniable part of, like, my job and my personal life is a kind of deadening to certain aspects of, like, the sensory awareness of the world around you.

And also, it's kind of interesting. I mean, you've lived here for a little while now. But in Los Angeles, there is a certain, because you're always in your car and because you're kind of following the same routes often. You don't have the feeling that this guy does of public transportation and walking and being near other people for better or for worse. Sometimes seeing incredible moments of camaraderie and sometimes seeing incredible moments of any humanity. And just to read a book like this where everything is stumbling into cafes and stumbling onto trains and squeaking by people and waiting and waiting rooms and stuff like that is such a – and to have it – all be processed on this very primal level is actually, it was like almost overwhelming to read. I agree with you. I just said this to my wife over the weekend that we've lived here for six or seven months now,

and there's some roads that we take every day just to get from our house to other places or for me to come here to the studio. Every time I take this drive, every morning, then I take the drive. If I turn my head a different way, I will see something that I've never seen before. Because you don't notice. When you're walking someplace or walking to a train or whatever, you're constantly taking in everything. You're like, I can't believe there's another pour over coffee place right down the street. Exactly. I was so lucky. But really, I was like, oh, there's a pink apartment building, two blocks from my house that is very striking.

And I'd never seen it even where I've lived here seven months because I never cocked my head to the left when driving past it. To read a book where, which is an act of construction and imagined it as imagination. Written by a guy who just has a bunch of maps. Who has a bunch of maps? It's pretty amazing. The other thing that I wanted to say about Russell and about the series in general that I think sometimes people

if this is the first book in a series like this that you've read in a spy thriller or whatever, I wonder if you're having this reaction that I've heard other people say when they picked up books in long-running series whether they're by Pelicanos or Michael Connoes or Michael Connolly

or James Lee Burke or any of the other writers that we like a lot, which is that at a certain point, or even Alan First, at a certain point You know their tricks. You know their ticks. You know the familiar beats that they hit. And, you know, we're reading, you guys, we've all read Zou Station now, book one in this series. John Russell, I feel pretty confident saying John Russell is going to come out of World War II okay.

Effie's probably going to come out okay too. You know, the Wiseners, he gets the daughters out. You don't think she's going to be like Ilsa from Indiana Jones in the last crusade? Oh, no spoilers. I think that, you know, the Wisner daughters get out, and that is a happy ending in this. And one thing you have to realize going into this, generally, you're buying into that. You know, there's something that we, that Chris and I talk about when we talk about the relationship with television that is applicable here too, which is that for all of the dramatic advances in shock and extremity of violence or inhumanity or anything else that you can do in TV now,

the relationship with TV is still based on familiarity and warmth to a degree. We still want to see these people that we like, be in their world, and then have some degree of certainty or something. security in their outcome or in the type of story we're going to be told. I read books for that same reason, too. I mean, this book did, like many of these novels that we're talking about, Zuse Station had moments that really shocked and unsettled me, and we're going to get into it in terms of the plot. But there is also something, it's a difficult balance,

but there's also something warm and comforting about slipping back into John Ross's trench coat. This is an interesting, that even is the case usually in LeCarrie books, although not all of them where basically, I mean, my favorite ones actually have quite dark endings. Oh, no, but I'm saying those are not, that's not a series. No, I know. The smiley ones are a series. True.

The way that things have a tendency to work out for the protagonist is definitely very comforting. There's a lot of tension. I actually thought, you know, we were talking about how there isn't a oil barge on the dam you that gets blown up. Because of that, I found those dark moments. We can talk about them specifically, Wiser's death and McKinley's death and the deaths of the guys who are Russell's neighbors who get thrown out of the windows.

That was the part in particular. Happen in a way that are almost more effective because they're so straightforward. Because you find out about them the way that our protagonist finds out about them. Their deaths aren't dramatized in any kind of way. and it only compounds the amount of fear that people must have been living under at that time that it isn't a bigger deal, that it's almost you're encouraged to keep looking the other way.

You don't want to be a part of this. You don't want to get caught up in this. You don't want to draw attention to yourself. You don't want to say, hey, what the hell is going on here too loud? What could be more human than wanting to put your head down and not be thrown out of a window? Right. There's something seductive about that.

And one of the most amazing things about the, the world down and creates, you know, this is not a book set in the trenches. This is not a book set on the battlefield. This is a book set in a city that is moving forward in a city that is about to get, to be the, you know, identified as the locus of evil in the world, basically. The city that is about to be bombed and strafed and ripped apart. And people are going to soccer matches. There are still people who are worthwhile people living there.

And, you know, obviously one of the reasons why we were eager to suggest this book now, too, is because elements of creeping fascism into a place are deeply unsettling. You know, the thing about this book, this is a World War II book, but World War II hasn't started yet. Yet every character is fighting or dying in World War II, even if they don't. Or looking to make money off of it. Or even if they don't realize it yet. And that feeling of powerlessness that grips every character in this book at one point or another, from Russell to his sister-in-law, to even his brother-in-law, who is himself a Nazi

in the face of what might happen to his son is one of the things that I will take away from the experience of reading it. Yeah, I personally just loved the... I mean, we've talked about the food and the sex and the travel that happens in the book. I love the soccer scenes. And the trip to London in general.

The enormity of travel at that time and the... You really earned, like, getting somewhere, whether it was by ship or in a janky plane or a long train ride and the amount of customs and borders you had to cross and the walls that you had to climb to get to another country and experience another culture

something I obviously have taken for granted in my life and I'm privileged to do so. It's just the trip they make to London and the sort of wonder, and you talk about Berlin is about to become the locus of evil, London's about to get bombed. This is a last moment of Bella Pock, you know what I mean?

Like just really like people, even if they're down on their luck financially or whatever, They almost seem to understand these are the last good days. Think about the physical proximity of this. We take for granted how small the world is, but also how far we can travel. And how quickly. The freedom we have to do that. Germany and England are pretty close.

They're not separated by all that much. But it is existentially different for the Wisener girls and the mother to be there. But then, as you say, they're safe. in quotes. They have been safely transported to a place that is not going to round them up and murder them, but they're been taken to a place that is going to be bombed. And the sun is looking to go to Israel.

And there's a lot of other stuff going on there. Yeah, I thought that another really interesting part about the book, especially when in the London trip you really see it. But even in his travels to various parts of Germany and Poland, he goes to Poland, right? Yeah, early in the book, right? I think he goes in this book. Yeah.

Or is it, anyway, his various trips around Central Europe that he makes in Eastern Europe, the national character that comes out, like there is a real distinction when he goes to some weird off-season seaside resort versus Berlin versus London versus, you know, when he's attending some soccer match. And it actually is like that collective, we're all in the crowd, everybody's just sort of commiserating about how crap the team is or whatever. the arsenal scene is one of my favorites in the book just because it's just such like an amazing thing that he's experiencing with his son who is clearly on this precipice between falling into a life that will I mean ultimately destroy him and it becomes a Nazi or not and that those those moments like you're talking about they they do find these weird gray areas and what is we view such a black and white conflict well if you're talking you're talking you You know, you're talking about something that I think we still approve of, which is blind fanaticism for a sports team, right? We wish that we could do that, and we often point to sports as, like, a more ideal place where we can have these conflicts and then all go have beers together afterwards. One of the things that Downing handles very delicately and quite well is the character of Paul, Russell's son,

because he is a big soccer fan, and he also, if you think about it in the broadest strokes, like, well, what's wrong with wanting to root for your country? Like, what you want to be on the winning team, right? And everything is sort of telling him that. And there are moments when it's expressed in ways that are not noxious when he's just like, you know, we have a good train system, you know, or like, boy, we have good architecture. That building is tall, you know, or like our soccer is better, our potato salads better. Like, you know, I say that about, you know, roast pork sandwiches in Philly are better than they are in other places.

We all have this sort of local pride. But then we're dealing with a kid who is in the Nazi youth. like that's actually a thing that's happening. Yeah. And when I talk about how Russell always kind of knows what to do, I mean, the speeches, the conversations he had, has with his son are always like they had been vetted by a child psychologist. You know, the thing about Russell that is,

that is fictional in the good way and that he's heroic in those moments. He never loses it with his son. He always strikes the right tone of just gently questioning, but not wanting to destroy him or threaten him. I mean, of all the things in the six-book series, I'm very curious how that plays out. I also just have to say before we move on, it's just that one of my favorite parts of the book

is the whenever the group, all the journalists get together, it's like Jack Slaney. Jack Slaney. And also just like that golden era of journalism where even you would write one piece and then have six lunches. Liquid lunches. But also think about the journalists in this book

when they go to see the fear of her like, like Chris in a boat or whatever. And they're all just joking and rolling their eyes, you know, with, with a really alcohol-fueled but also deeply worn, bone-in cynicism, because they know what's going to happen. And also, you have to also consider that they're able to roll their eyes because they're going to get flown out.

You know, they're spectators. Yeah, absolutely. And other people are going to go down for it in more horrific ways. Let's recommend a couple of titles for people that if they like this book, obviously, we've talked about Allen First and the Polish officer. Yeah, which first do you recommend to people? I think the Polish officer is a really good place to start because you would actually know within the first 30 pages how it's different from this book. But it has the same sense of romance and the same sense of cross-European intrigue.

So the Polish officer is great. If you're feeling ambitious, you can try Dark Star or Night Soldiers because those are the two huge tomes. Yeah, I would say it's interesting. There really aren't many wrong places to start. I often tell people with first to start with a linked, a two book series. So the French producer ones? The one about a French film producer. It starts with the world at night, and the second is red gold, because those are, also, all of first books are really love letters to Paris.

All the characters find themselves in Paris, even if only briefly, they're all in love with it in the moment before it falls, basically. And that's one of the few that is actually set in Paris. I think night soldiers is, which is the one where it's the guy starts in Bulgaria and it goes to Spain and then it goes to... I think that's night soldiers. Yeah, so night soldiers is though sort of is the one that is his first one. Yeah, and that is all of World War II, basically. Yeah, Nightshoulders and Dark Star, again, these are the most ambitious ones, and then they became slimmer. And then they become like smaller stories.

So Alan First is obviously, I also recommend Philip Kerr's Berlin noir books that are about a detective in post-war Germany. Eric Ambler is more contemporary to this time period writer. A coffin for Demetrius. A coffin for Demetrios is one of the best thrillers I've ever read. There are many others. He wrote brilliant books, Journey Into Fear, and the one that became the film TopCappy, but I don't remember what it's called. The book is called off the top of my head. But Ambler was a huge influence on Downing and Alan First.

And it's interesting too because he's writing with a lot of the same world weariness and tone, but with none of the perspective of time. And I think Andy and I, two of our favorite novelists, Sir La Carey and Charles McCarrie. I forgot to mention McCarrie. But they are both more Cold War, and we can get into that. Yeah, we should probably do it separate. Since we're going right back to it anyway. Since we're going right back to it.

But yeah, and Len Dighton, I would put on there too. These are writers who were dealing with what came after. Yeah, post-war. What these books are about. But it's interesting. Like we, and we're going to continue this, I promise, doing podcasts like this and recommending books. But it was interesting that all these writers that we've just mentioned are some of our

favorites for a very long time. I picked up Zoo Station. I just saw it on a friend's bedside table. I just bought it for Kindle because it looked like fun. And I just couldn't put it. down and I'm really glad that everyone sort of took to it and enjoyed it too because of the way it feels now but also because it's just such a it's just it's a quality gripping greed and I think there's a moral to it there's a testament to individual acts of kindness and doing what's right

and alcoholic journalists yeah I really think that that's one of the things that we should always all right thank you for joining us for the double down book club we are going to make another suggestion very soon we just have to identify which one it is so we'll let you guys know and I think it would be great if we could get some feedback on this because there are a couple ways we can go and we're excited to go in a bunch of different directions but do we want to do like a more literary book that we love do we want to go to do something more contemporary. Do you guys like the idea of... It's updike season.

Should we just go deep on the rabbit books? Or do you guys like the idea of keeping this relatively crime thriller spy focused and going in terms of favorite authors, favorite time periods, favorite styles? Right. We could do all of it, but it takes time. to read books. We have Twitter poll. Okay, so thank you very much for joining us.

Keep reading. Double down. Just want to say thank you to everybody who went out and read Seuss Station. It's quite moving to see people reading books. I can't believe you guys did that. Because we suggested them. I thought that only happened to Chase Serrano. I know, right?

We want to keep this going, so we will be sure to do a double down book club every couple of months so that we can... Reading is fundamental, man. And fun. All this month, we are asking you to tell a friend about a podcast. that they would love right now think of a friend think of your mom think of a family member anyone you care about and think about what podcasts they might really love maybe it's wrestling they want to listen to the mass man show maybe it's video games and they want to listen to achievement oriented both ringer podcasts

are they into filmmaking they should check out sean fennessy's interview series on channel 33 where he talks to some of our best directors they're a podcast outside of the ringer maybe they like soccer they should check out the football ramble that's my favorite podcast for years and years and years you got it okay so now do it You tell them in real life or on social media, and if they don't know about the podcast, you just show them how to use them. It's pretty easy, right? Tell us what you recommend with the hashtag tripod. That's T-R-Y-P-O-D. And thanks for spreading the word.