Joan's Picks: Ashes in the Snow and Servants of the Damned

Ashes in the Snow by Oriana Ramunno. It’s essentially a murder mystery set in Auschwitz where a Detective who’s an expert Criminologist  is sent from Berlin to investigate the unexplained death of a senior Nazi at the Camp, but given the nature of the required purity of the Aryan race etc he simply can’t allow it to be known that he’s in the advanced stages of Parkinsons. He’s simply appalled by what he discovers goes on there but he has to hide his disgust and his illness to survive, as he works out who to save. There are a lot of books both fiction and nonfiction about WW2 and the concentration camps but this one has an interesting and different angle, and was inspired by the author’s great uncle.  Servants of the Damned by David Enrich. I know Francesca talked to him last week so you’ll both be all over this one – fascinating book about the corporatisation and growth of law as  an industry from relatively small service centres back in the day to global behemoths now, and using Jones Day in America as an exemplar of how they have lost their soul in the process.  LISTEN ABOVE  See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.