The Mystery of the Good Nazi

A pulse-pounding locked-room murder mystery set on a zeppelin bound for Brazil from Nazi Germany—think Murder on the Orient Express in the air…

“The ingenious [solution] is only one of many pleasures in this powerfully atmospheric novel” that can be easily devoured in a single night (The Times).

In 1933, a zeppelin leaves Nazi Germany, chartered to cross the Atlantic and land in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. It’s a modern luxury holiday for travelers performing loyalty to a radicalizing Germany—until a murder in the airship’s washroom exposes the rot beneath the Reich.

Police Detective Bruno Brückner happens to be on board and is drafted to investigate, only to discover that the "Good Nazi" victim was a total fabrication. Hidden among his belongings is a stash of banned "degenerate" material. It seems everyone on board has something to hide, and even beyond Germany’s border, no one is safe to voice what they may know.

There are no good Nazis, not on this flight and not in the Fatherland. From the wealthy baroness to the antisemitic doctor, every passenger wears a mask of complicity or survival, and in this sky-high pressure cooker the truth is more dangerous than the fall.

As Brückner peels back their lies, he uncovers a startling story of fake identities, queer love, and revenge, where nothing is as it appears, until finally the secret of the 'good Nazi' is revealed...

Giving fascinating insight into the “twisted psyche of fascists” (The Critic) and 1930s queer culture under Nazi rule, this thrilling historical mystery will keep readers hooked until the final page."There’s an ingenious twist to this gripping and queasily resonant thriller, as well as a fascinating insight into the lost world of zeppelin travel."
—The Guardian

"The ingenious answer [to the mystery] is only one of the many pleasures to be found in this powerfully atmospheric novel."
—The Times (UK)

"A real contender for the year’s most satisfying closing line...[A conclusion with a] fierce sense of justice and a twist that can only be called perfect."
—The Irish Times

"An effective locked room mystery with a clear moral content... A well-realised cast provides insight into the twisted psyche of fascists in a manner made relevant for today."
—The Critic

"This is the first locked room mystery I have read that is set in a Zeppelin, and it is full of fascinating details about the luxury of such travel between Germany and Brazil in the 1930s... Beautifully written and with some good sly jokes in among the horror, this novel won a literary prize in Brazil."
—Literary Review (UK)

"Ably combines a homage to Golden Age-style detection and a strong nod to Agatha Christie [in a] twisty and mischievous whodunnit... A fascinating exercise in retro crime writing, with an added social and historical context and a small dose of mischief, The Good Nazi is short and to the point, and wonderfully entertaining."
—Crime TimeSamir Machado de Machado is an award-winning Brazilian writer, translator and graphic designer. He has won the Jabuti Prize for Best Entertainment Novel twice, for Dry Bodies (2020) and The Good Nazi (2023), and received the Minuano Literature Prize in 2018. His work has been translated into French, Italian and English. He was born in Porto Alegre in 1981.

Rahul Bery translates from Spanish and Portuguese. Recent translations include books by José Henrique Bortoluci, Samir Machado de Machado, Vicente Luis Mora and Michel Nieva.It emerged like a Valkyrie in the skies of Recife, advancing through the clouds with a serenity that concealed its rapid progress. Viewed head-on, it was just a silver disc, a shimmering shield. However, as it moved it was moulded by the light which struck its every sur-face, its graceful shape disguising the astonishing reality: at that very moment, sixty-seven tonnes were floating elegantly over the state of Pernambuco.

Three years earlier, its first passage through the city had been the occasion for a municipal holiday and had brought huge crowds onto the streets. But this was not the first of its many trips to Brazil, nor would it be the last. There were ten per year in total between the months of June and October, undertaken with German regularity, and there had never been any accidents. Although there were no longer any holidays or crowds, the airship still drew fascinated gazes, from people staring out of their windows, children on the street and anyone else whose routine was interrupted by the sight of that 230-metre colossus.

It was four in the afternoon when the ropes were tied to the mooring mast and the LZ 127 Graf Zeppelin landed in Campo do Jiquiá, Recife. The first to board were the customs officers, the maritime police and the port health authorities, to carry out their inspection. Then the passengers disembarked. For some, it was their final destination. For others, taken by car to the Hotel Central, it was the last opportunity, after nearly three days spent crossing the Atlantic, to stretch their legs or smoke (which, naturally, was not permitted on board), before continuing their journey for a further day and a half to Rio de Janeiro.

Hotel Central was the tallest building in town, a yellow tower built in the style that had only recently come to be called art deco. Its seventh-floor restaurant provided a panoramic view over the city. A group of tables was reserved for the passengers of the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin, both those in transit and those still waiting to board. Among them, seated alone at a table, was a man in a dark suit.

The passport in his breast pocket would have revealed the following details: Name: Bruno Brückner. Age: thirty-two. Build: medium. Face shape: oval. Eye colour: grey. Place of birth: Berlin. Occupation: Kriminalpolizei, police detective. A recent scar on the right side of his face, running from the temple to the middle of his cheek, lent a certain air of danger to his features, which, otherwise, gave off a neutral, distant look of indifference. The swastika pin attached to his suit showed affiliation to the party which was gradually permeating every aspect of German daily life. Bruno was drinking his whisky and soda, reading a recent edition of Aurora Alemã (German Dawn), the Nazi party’s weekly magazine, published by the embassy in São Paulo. The news, several months out of date, reported how, after having gained a majority in the Reichstag and thus consecrating their leader as chancel-lor, the Nazis were now passing the Enabling Act, which gave absolute power to the Führer to create laws without being inconvenienced by parliament or the courts.

Bruno put the newspaper to one side. He took a brown paper envelope from his waistcoat pocket and, from inside it, removed a card his nephew had given him at the train station in Berlin before he departed for the LZ airfield in Friedrichshafen. In the child’s drawing, the airship was smiling like a big flying whale. Little Josef had drawn his uncle inside that whale, wearing a hat and with his hand raised in farewell, as if he were the proverbial biblical prophet.

Bruno smiled, put the card back into the envelope, returned it to his pocket and picked up the newspaper again. The news was always delivered in the same tedi-ous and optimistic tone of the party propaganda that was now the voice of a government which sought to fuse the party into the national identity: being German would necessarily come to mean being a Nazi. Faithful to its beliefs in German racial superiority, the newspaper adhered to its totalitarian motto: “Deutschland über alles. Germany above all… love it or leave it.”

Bruno grew tired of the newspaper and looked around the dining room, seeking to identify which of his travel companions from the days spent over the ocean would stay on as part of the group continuing to Rio. His dis-creet habits meant he had not interacted with them much. During the journey, he had chosen to rise early and have breakfast alone, before everyone else, and had spent most of his time reading, either in the dining room or in his cabin, which prevented others from striking up conversation with him. His gruff air was also justified by the lack of any sights to admire during the past few days: no matter which window you looked out of, all you could see was the tedious and endless Atlantic horizon. He had sought not to arouse the interest of any of the other passengers, who barely noticed him, or, if they did, took him for a shy recluse.
There were some new faces among those present, but one seemed familiar. This man was of a similar age to him, with jet black hair that was combed back and set rigidly in place with gleaming Brilliantine. He was also sitting alone and, despite the heat, wore a black overcoat, as if he expected an improbable winter to arrive in the city at any moment. He was cradling a leather briefcase in his hands, protectively, and for an instant Bruno felt the other man was staring at him. He stared back at him and the man, out of instinct or politeness, looked away and went back to letting his gaze wander around the dining room, sombre and blasé as if in a Tamara de Lempicka painting.

Bruno did not remember having seen the man on board and thus assumed he was a guest at the hotel or a passenger waiting to be taken to the boarding gate. He finished his whisky and soda just seconds before a member of the hotel staff came to announce that the taxis that would take them back to the Zeppelin were waiting for them at the entrance. When he got up, he noticed the man with the briefcase had also risen and was heading to the lift with the others.

So, he was a passenger, Bruno concluded.

At half past six the sun went down and the taxis returned the passengers to Campo do Jiquiá. As they entered the Zeppelin, just as when they had boarded in Germany, each passenger was given a white linen napkin inside a personalized envelope, which each one of them had to keep and reuse until the end of the journey, appar-ently to reduce the weight on board. Bruno could not see what difference half a dozen napkins would make to the tonnage of that Leviathan and suspected that this was done to compensate for the lack of laundry facilities. As soon as he entered his cabin, Bruno saw that another whisky and soda was waiting for him on the table by the window. It was one of those little details which had garnered such high praise for the service. Next to the drink was a typed list with the names of all the passengers on board. He noticed a greater number of Brazilian names, passengers with surnames like Botelho,
Tavares, Correia, almost always men and almost all with the same occupation: commerce.
It was understandable. Just to go on that journey of a day and a half between Recife and Rio, sailing through the air, feeling like a character in a Jules Verne novel, would cost you 1,400 reichsmarks. The trip was a small extravagance these men had permitted themselves and, in some cases, their wives.

Likewise, Bruno had indulged himself. He could have come to Brazil by ship, it would certainly have been cheaper, but he did not like the idea of spending two weeks bobbing up and down on the high seas. And as there were no transatlantic passenger aircraft, the only other possible way for a passenger to cross the Atlantic from Europe to South America was to travel through the air on the Luftschiffbau Zeppelin.

When he looked at the list, he also noticed that a single new German name had appeared since their departure from Friedrichshafen: Otto Klein. This, he concluded, was the name of the fellow from the hotel.

Bruno sat down on the sofa, drank his whisky and soda and contemplated the turf on the airfield. The truth was, there wasn’t much to do on board except eat, sleep and socialize—the passenger gondola was not much bigger than a luxury train wagon. In the prow were situated the command deck, the navigation room, the radio room and the tiny galley for food preparation—which boasted of being the world’s first to be made of aluminium. And on either side of a narrow corridor running through the stern was a row of small but comfortable cabins. At the end of the corridor were the WCs and washrooms.

At eight o’clock in the evening, once the postbags had been delivered and collected and the sixteen enormous gasbags had been refilled with hydrogen, the ropes were cut and the Zeppelin departed. Soon after it had taken flight, the chief steward knocked on the door of each cabin, informing the passengers that dinner would be served shortly.

Bruno pulled his suitcase over and unpacked his things before leaving the cabin, whose sofa would be dismantled by the room attendant and made up as a bed. He made his way to the dining room which dominated the centre of the Zeppelin’s gondola. After examining each one of the passengers in turn, Bruno sat at an empty table—the one nearest to the prow, next to the starboard windows. The wooden chairs were upholstered with elegant floral prints, the tables draped with fine linen tablecloths, the wallpaper decorated with art nouveau arabesques and the windows framed by curtains. The place gave off a pleasantly nostalgic feeling as if, while on board, one could return to the world as it was before the Great War. But a return to that world of abundant luxuries and comforts would also inevitably mean a return to immi-nent war, for that had been the natural consequence of those times. He had been twelve when the war began and sixteen when it ended. That had been his adoles-cence. And who in the world, thought Bruno, having reached adulthood, would really want to relive such an adolescence?