Taylor Trade Publishing, 2015.
Two Stars
Set during the Great Depression, with fascism becoming increasingly
popular, the 1936 Berlin Olympics were a politically contentious event. Many believed
we in North America should boycott the Olympics due to anti-Jewish sentiment,
while others supported the American Nazi Party and had their own agenda in participating
with the Germans. While these decisions were made high up in the political
world, it was the athletes who had worked hard to compete who would ultimately
suffer – especially the first black athletes hoping to enter the Olympics.
This novel explores parallels between the treatment of Jews in Germany
and black people in America in the 1930s, as seen through the eyes of
investigator Jay Klug and his friend T-Bone Searle. As they search for a
missing woman, their journey takes them from the mobster underbelly of New
Jersey to the glamour of Los Angeles, and many places in between. Levitt weaves
historical figures in with his fiction ones, including gangsters and German
assassins.
While the time and place are intriguing historically, my excitement
got side-tracked by the main narrative. I found Jay’s story really difficult to
slog through, and I have to admit that I only made it halfway through the
novel. As interested as I was in the history, the characters were not
compelling to me. And there were so many of them! The intricacies of the plot
were lost on me as I struggled just to pay attention. It’s rare that I don’t
finish a novel – however much I dislike it – but this was the exception.
Overall, the novel seemed to be well-researched – perhaps too much
detail – with authentic historical issues and examination of conflicting
socio-political motivations. But without the right characters to draw me in,
Dreams Bigger Than the Night was just a surface-level crime novel that I couldn’t
get in to.
I received this book for free from Taylor Trade Publishing and NetGalley
in exchange for an honest review.
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