In this last book of a trilogy set in Hamburg in 1948, Rademacher’s main character, Chief Inspector Frank Stave, is trying to end the rubble searchers’ trade as well as to end another trade in forged banknotes by the titular Forger. As Stave loses the woman he first met among the stones, his son arrives unheralded having left the prison camp in which he was incarcerated. A sad ending to a fine understanding of post-War Germany.