By Lev Raphael

By Lev Raphael
Knight Ridder Newspapers
(KRT)
The search for the killer of transvestites in 1930s Berlin takes place against a dark and violent backdrop in Gaylord Dold's "The Last Man in Berlin" (Sourcebooks, 345 pages, $25). Clashes between Nazis and Communists, and both groups and the government, are constant.
In this chaos, Detective Harry Wulff is not only stalked by the killer, he's politically suspect because both his boss and his lover Johanna are Jewish in a Berlin that is slowly being strangled by the Nazis.
Dangers multiply when Wulff is also asked to find the spy in police headquarters leaking anti-Nazi information.
While the book could have used a truly functional period Berlin map and more period detail, it's a solid, sometimes exciting thriller.
Franz Schmidt is no ordinary auditor in a German banking house. He's descended from a famous knight of the Teutonic Order, and he has already had a run-in with the Nazis because he tried to save one of their victims.
When the Nazis establish a powerful connection with his bank in 1938 and the Gestapo threatens the bank's Jewish secretary, Schmidt finds himself instinctively trying to help her despite the potential danger to his family. What follows is a series of breathtaking risks.
Despite one very cliched character, Marshall Browne's "Eye of the Abyss" (Thomas Dunne, 290 pages, $23.95) is a superb page-turner with a terrific sense of the era.
A shopkeeper's death in 1943 brings French detective St.-Cyr and his German partner Kohler to Brittany in "Dollmaker" by J. Robert Janes (Soho, 258 pages, $12).
The suspected killer is a German submarine officer who had business dealings with the victim, and the author skillfully charts all the shifting cross-currents between conquerors and the defeated.
The novel's main strength is its vivid depiction of a remote but significant corner of Occupied France in 1943 that's worn down by resentment, deprivation and bombings. But the author switches point of view too often at the expense of coherence, and his characters talk to themselves far too much.
Also out this monthL
"The Murder Room" by P.D. James (Knopf, 432 pages, $25.95): Dalgliesh investigates a copycat murder at a unique museum.
"Pompeii" by Robert Harris (Random House, 304 pages, $25.95): Crime and natural disaster threaten the ancient Roman city.
"The Conspiracy Club" by Jonathan Kellerman (Ballantine, 384 pages, $26.95): A psychologist investigates Jack the Ripper-style killings he's suspected of.