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Madame understood men well and was happy if she could meet their demands. She had recently experienced such a moment of joy in finding for the Deputy Head of the Criminal Department of the Police Praesidium, Counsellor Eberhard Mock, two girls who could play chess. Madame especially liked this stocky man with his thick, black, wavy hair. The Counsellor never forgot to bring flowers for Madame and small gifts for the girls who were glad to serve him. He was level-headed and taciturn, he loved charades, bridge, chess and curvaceous blondes. He could gratify his passions at Madame le Goef’s without inhibition. He would arrive at midnight every Friday, enter by the side door and, without pausing to watch whatever was being performed on the stage, go to his favorite room where his two odalisques would be waiting for him. They would change him into a silk dressing gown, feed him caviar and give him red Rhine wine to drink. Mock would sit still, though his hands would rove over the alabaster skin of his slaves. After dinner, he would settle down with one of them for a game of chess. The other, in the meantime, would go under the table and do something known already to prehistoric peoples.
from: Death in Breslau
Rough Times
Eberhard Mock lives in Breslau (today: Wroclaw). His adventures and cases are mainly set in the years from 1920 until 1945. (Let’s forget the short retrospect scenes from the 50s and 90s.) It’s the Weimar Republik and then the Third Reich. His cases and his life are strongly intertwined with the political turmoils and developments, the social life and the role of the Armed Forces in Germany.
Mock works for the police, the crime squad. Somehow he is a policeman trying to investigate and unveil the culprits, however, he is also aware of his almost unlimited possibilities to improve his life, his status and his private environment. He takes everything that comes his way. … and he survives!
I was rather shocked when reading the novels – I only read some of them. They are intensive reading matter with complex plots and lots of people somehow messing up with Mocks business. Especially the years of WWII are filled with cruelty and unfairness. Mock’s world is merciless. He lives in dark times.
Mock is a child of these times. Although deep inside provided with a feeling for justice and pity for the victims he is ruthless. If looking at his career at the police, if in the 20s or later during Nazi Germany, he always swims on top. He likes women although married. Even more he likes booze. Always he is open for a bribe.
Germany and WWII are seen and portrayed with meticulous addiction to details of daily life, always a hard life, especially towards end of WWII when most of the people just tried to survive. Crime amid of this war chaos has got its special taste sometimes seeming to become insignificant compared to the reckless lines of action played by the Nazis and their comrades-in-arms.
Summing up you won’t take to Mock, however, he isn’t a bad boy to the core.