Berlin Wartime Thriller / CI Schenke Books in Order

The Berlin Wartime Thriller, or CI Schenke, novels move Simon Scarrow into the shadowed streets of Nazi Germany. Instead of legionaries, the central figure is Criminal Inspector Horst Schenke, a Kripo detective trying to solve murders in a city sliding into total war.

In Blackout, set in December 1939, Schenke investigates the killing of a young woman during Berlin’s enforced night‑time blackout. The case quickly links to other attacks and to powerful men inside the regime. Schenke’s refusal to join the Nazi Party has already made him suspect; now he must pursue a killer while navigating the suspicions of the Gestapo and senior SS officers.

Dead of Night takes place in the bitter winter of 1940. An SS doctor is found dead in what looks like a suicide, but his widow and Schenke both doubt the official story. As Schenke digs deeper he uncovers a connection to a remote clinic and a secret that some of the most dangerous people in the Reich will do anything to protect.

In A Death in Berlin, Schenke is drawn into a bloody feud between gangsters and corrupt party officials. The war is still in its early stages, but shortages, fear and bombers in the distance are already reshaping life in the capital. Schenke’s own private life, including a relationship with a Jewish woman, becomes a lever his enemies can use.

Across the series Scarrow is interested less in battlefield manoeuvres than in the everyday machinery of a dictatorship: petty officials, overlapping police forces, and the way ordinary crimes are twisted by ideology and fear. Schenke walks a constant tightrope, trying to do his job without becoming part of the system he hates.

The result is a set of tense, atmospheric crime novels where the stakes are not only who committed a particular murder, but whether a decent man can survive with his integrity intact in a state built on terror.