This is a historical romance, set in 1963 East Berlin. Evony is captured by Reinhardt Volker, the "Midnight Hunter" of the title, when she, her father, and friends and coworkers try to escape to West Berlin through a tunnel they've dug under the wall. Her father disappears, her friend Ana is shot and killed by Volker, and Evony escapes but is soon picked up by Volker and taken to his apartment. He tells her if she tries to leave he will have her put in prison (and presumably tortured and/or executed there), he gives her a secretarial job in his office (complete with a new wardrobe and Western European goodies), and she has her own room where he leaves her alone until she's ready for him. Which takes less than two weeks.

This is technically a captivity narrative, because Evony is held against her will, but it's not a usual one because she's not physically coerced and even if she left and wasn't pursued by him, she'd still be at the mercy of the rest of the police and Stasi since she's a fugitive. Her life with him is actually better than it would be on her own because real freedom is not an option in this scenario.

The rest of the plot: Evony falls in lust with Volker almost immediately. Within two weeks they're having sex (in the apartment and in the office), but this isn't an erotic romance in the sense that the sex is not front and center. There's a fair amount, explicitly described, in the first half, but then the plot takes over and their relationship is referred to but not detailed further. Evony falls in with someone at the Stasi offices who claims he will help her escape, but (view spoiler).

Volker is presented as complex and sympathetic, despite the fact that we see him murdering people out of spite or vengeance more than once. These are not people he needs to kill. Even when he expresses remorse for killing (view spoiler), his remorse is not directed toward the victim, but toward what might have happened in those same circumstances. He is a powerful, respected member of the Stasi, and he takes pride in his work and his role in the regime. Evony challenges him, but this is undercut by the fact that she finds him hot and eventually sympathetic and lovable. Essentially, the narrative approves of Volker as an effective member of the Stasi organization.

Evony is uncomplicated and essentially uninteresting. She was escaping because everyone else was; she had no goals, no dreams that the reader can discern. She hates Volker and then she loves him. She learns to type. She gives him a blowjob in the office. She basically stops trying to leave him, even though the text tells us she's thinking about it. She's completely narcissistic: she misses the people who are dead or disappeared for her own sake. She wishes they were around to love her still. She's upset at times with Volker's murderous behavior, but she gets over it fast.

Positive reviews point to the authentic historical setting. This is partially true, in that there is a lot of name-checking of streets, food, cigarettes, etc. But the overall picture makes no sense. Where are the Soviets? How does Volker just install her as a secretary with no one caring or noticing? Where is the political and military apparatus? We are told Evony hates the Stasi and the government, but the text just mentions stuff and moves on. You never get a feel for what living in a repressive, all-seeing political climate is like.

In the end, the reader is asked to believe that a powerful, murderous, rage-filled, 40-something Stasi officer is hero material. And he is tamed by a 23-year-old girl with no signs of any personality, let alone an interesting one. The sex scenes are good and I believe in their lust, but a timeless romance should have more than that. The HEA is believable in the sense that they are both so amoral/immoral that they make a good pair.

Even if you accept the narrative's argument that Volker wasn't a Nazi (simply an officer in the army under Rommel, who it increasingly appears WAS a Nazi), he's still Stasi. If you think that is somehow not as bad, well, we're talking levels of extreme evil here. In addition to arresting, torturing, and killing uncounted numbers of their own citizens, the Stasi turned ordinary people into snitches to the extent that East Germans could never be sure whom they could trust, even in their own families. They exacted a level of psychological trauma that we're still trying to understand. And it is clear from the narrative that Volker is proud of who he is and what he does. He's not tortured by his present, he's tortured by his past. But in his present he kills people when they displease him. He goes into red rages. Their eventual destination is chosen in large part because (view spoiler). He believes that would be wrong. But murdering people, that's not so wrong as long as he does some good things as well. That's not how honor works.

Finally, when I began this I thought it was a dark romance. It is and it isn't. There's no physical coercion, there's very little psychological head-gaming, and there's no more explicit sex than in your average hot romance (maybe less). The darkness is in asking us to believe that people who commit evil acts, and who are complicit in widespread social repression and killing, are somehow redeemable and deserving of an HEA. That's something more than "dark" to me, and it's certainly not a romance. ( )