The Cleaner by Elisabeth Herrmann
My rating: 4 of 5 stars

The Cleaner is a Cold War thriller set in Germany. It opens with a scene from a children’s home in 1985, in East Germany, a new child is brought in, an old one disappears, and it’s safer not to ask any questions.

The story then jumps forward, the Berlin Wall has come down. Judith Kepler is a grown women, a loner, she has struggled for years. Now she has some stability in her life. She works as a cleaner, one who cleans a place after a death has occurred. Sent to the home of a murder victim, Judith has a huge job on her hands, but more shocking is the discovery of a letter with her own name and details of her time at the children’s home.

Quirin Kaiserley is an intelligence expert, he’s always hunting answers over a…