Nightingale, I hear you singing (Saying from Berlin, meaning: I can hear which way the wind is blowing)
Most of the time I can't say exactly how I come up with ideas for my novels, because it's often a lengthy process. But the idea for this series came to me in a rather unusual way, which I’d like to share with you.
Did you know that Berlin is considered the capital city of nightingales, with around 1300-1500 specimen recorded? This queen of the night is an inconspicuous gray-brown bird by day that is difficult to spot in the hedges, but it blossoms by night. A nightingale can sing an average of 180 musical phrases. By way of comparison – the average tit chirps just 6 phrases. In addition, the nightingale learns something new every year, inspired by its surroundings.
It is often regarded as a symbol of spring, its song is a poetic embodiment of the soul in love, but it is also the harbinger of death. In Oscar Wilde's fairy tale 'The Nightingale and the Rose', the nightingale sacrifices its lifeblood - in the truest sense of the word - for a student in love, showing itself willing to help even in the death. Yet in that story, her death is in vain, and the gift is not appreciated.
A few years ago, I was in Berlin in the spring, researching my Radio Free Europe novel 'Fräulein Kiss träumt von der Freiheit'. I also visited the Allied Museum in Clayallee, where there was an exhibition on the Berlin Airlift. There were lots of photos of hungry and injured-looking children and portraits of the famous Raisin Bomber pilot Gail Halvorsen. The next day, I had the opportunity to walk through the escape tunnels that were dug shortly after the Wall was built and during the Cold War.
This tour made me realise that what you think you know in theory about this period can become a nightmarish reality. You suddenly realize how powerless people must have felt waking up behind a barbed wire fence that wasn't there the previous evening. How families were amputated and life plans destroyed by an arbitrary division into East and West, across streets, houses and even cemeteries.
All these impressions were simmering away when I took a cab back to my apartment late at night after visiting my son. The driver, a true Berlin eccentric, suddenly stopped on a somewhat dilapidated corner in Wilmersdorf and lowered the windows. I was a little nervous, but then he asked, 'Hear that? The little wonder?'
Unfortunately, all I could hear was my slightly accelerated pulse.
He shook his head and explained that he was an amateur ornithologist and that the nightingales of Berlin were his hobby. Then he suggested that I get out of the car and listen more closely. But as a crime writer, you tend to be overcautious, so I politely declined. Grinning broadly, he shrugged his shoulders. “Well then, no,” he said, and drove me to my destination in silence, then sped off.
I was just taking the key out of my backpack when I heard something. It was rather delicate at first, a chirping, which then gathered incredible momentum and became a beguiling song. Somewhere very close to me, in one of the hedges at the edge of Preussenpark. Fascinated, I paused and listened.
All the quotes, poems and stories that I’d heard or read about nightingales rushed to mind. And while I stood still, enchanted, the germ of an idea crystallized. I saw a child in front of me, one of those waiting for the Raisin Bomber, a girl who does her utmost to bring her mother a gift. A gift that would lead to a catastrophe that would henceforth cast a shadow over her life.
Carla was born in that instant, and with the next even louder warbles, her sister, Wallie, the queen of the night, popped up. From the very beginning, they were as real to as the song of that nightingale, they ignited my imagination ... and the result of that is what you’re holding in your hands now.
Nightingale & Co by Charlotte Printz (Corylus Books) Translator (Marina Sofia) out now.
Nightingale & Co is the first in a cosy historical crime series featuring the sisters of the Nightingale & Co detective agency in 1960s Berlin. Since the death of her beloved father, Carla has been running the Nightingale & Co detective agency by herself. It’s a far from easy job for a female investigator. When the chaotic, fun-loving Wallie shows up at the door, claiming to be her half-sister, Carla’s world is turned upside down. Wallie needs Carla – the Berlin Wall has been built overnight, leaving her unable to return to her flat in East Berlin. Carla certainly doesn’t need Wallie, with her secret double life and unorthodox methods for getting results. Yet the mismatched pair must find a way to work together when one of their clients is accused of murdering her husband.
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