I still Have A Bag in Berlin begins in April 5, 1986, in West Berlin, at 2 O'clock in the morning, when Jimmy Watchman, an Ex-super bowl champion, is sitting with his brother in a GI Disco called La Belle talking to his brother. Then all of the lights go out and there is a loud explosion. When he awakens a few days later, he realizes that there was an attack from an unknown source and that his brother Tony was dead.Twenty-four years later, in 2010, Jimmy receives a letter from the German Government that the unsolved case of the terrorist attack had been resolved and all of the occupants of the nightclub explosion would received 350,000. To receive the money, Jimmy would have to go back to Berlin and stand in front of the court and swear he was there.As much as he hates Berlin to do it, he takes a a plane to Berlin. Back in Berlin after so many years, he finds it completely different. What was so different? Then realizes, The Wall is not there!He meets the charismatic lawyer, Udo, playboy millionaire and brilliant lawyer, and teams up with his lead detective, Jutta, the black German woman who works for Udo, to help investigate the international terrorist gang. Preparing to come home with his money, Jimmy .goes to "Check Point Charlie," where, instead of the military police, he finds a cushy seat at a Starbucks. The old Berlin lifestyle of the GI clubs that he knew is long gone, but, then suddenly, its scent whiffs pass him momentarily...and then it is gone again!
Author Biography:
Cecil Brown has published several novels, including The Life and Loves of Mr Jiveass Nigger. He teaches at Stanford and UC Berkeley. In 1983, he published Days Without Weather and received high praise from James Baldwin and Richard Pryor. "Cecil Brown has written a moving and terrifying allegory concerning the various prices of art, love, and life and, most specifically, the black America's struggle not to be an accomplice to his own destruction." - James Baldwin commented on it, "With Days Without Weather "There is nothing corrupt about his pride," he wrote, "I have never met a writer who loved his work as much as Cecil Brown. The humor, the warmth, and even the smell are beautiful. - Richard Pryor, 1983. "Cecil Brown has seen it all.... In his new and timely novel, I Still Have A Bag In Berlin, he expands his range to the consequences of a 1989 terror attack at a West Germany disco... shinning a light on the contradictions we faced in the past, and that are still far from resolved." -Paul Wilner, San Francisco Chronicle critic, 2018 "I Still Have a Bag In Berlin...will take you back with its vivid recreations of harsher time, but of an uncertain present too. Sir Sind all Berliner!" --- Barry Powell, Greek scholar, author of World Myth, and Homer and the Origin of the Greek Alphabet.
