Book Review: Death of a Diva: From Berlin to Broadway by Brigitte Goldstein: A Superbly Woven Murder Story

Death of a Diva: From Berlin to Broadway by Brigitte Goldstein is a murder mystery suspense story about the ruthless murder of a legendary actress in 1941 in Broadway theater. The story is about Stella Berger whose shocking murder shakes the whole New York city. Stella was a popular film and theatre actress started her career in Germany. But being an openly opponent of Nazis she had to move from Germany to the United States to save her life and career. Her brutal murder indicates the roots of the conspiracy of her murder originated from Germany.

All investigations lead towards a single person an immigrant musician who hurriedly is given a verdict of death after a quick trial. During the same period a young man Misia Safran, a Jewish, and a expat from Germany gets engaged in this investigation and understands that the musician who was tried and sentenced to death was probably not at all involved in the murder of Stella Berger. Death of a Diva: From Berlin to Broadway by Brigitte Goldstein is an excellently woven murder mystery that keeps the interest in the story intact throughout. Misia decided to find out the reality of actual murderer and hence goes twenty years back into the life of Stella during her successful days in Germany during 1921s.

Misia meets various people who were close to Stella when she lived in Germany and learns a lot of things about her from them. In an attempt to get the right clues about Stella’s brutal murder, she tries to connect various threads of information about Stella, gathered from various places and people who used to know Stella. Misia learns about Stella early days in Vienna as an unknown entity to her career as an actress reaching to peak in Berlin. And while working on all such information gathering activities, Misia finds out a deep connection between Stella, her childhood and a deep secret. There is something in one of the vaults of a Swiss bank that could open up many secrets. But dilemma is that if Misia opens this secret in public, it could lead to damaging of the neat and clean image of the actress.

It was the stunning murder of Stella Berger that compelled Misia, a die-hard fan of Stella, to do this extra bit of effort in search of finding the real culprit behind the whole game. Overall Death of a Diva: From Berlin to Broadway by Brigitte Goldstein is quite interesting and mind boggling story line woven in a masterly manner.