Field Grey
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Review
'Far more illuminating and enjoyable than the season's other big thriller, John le Carré's Our Kind of Traitor' Daily Express.
'A brilliantly crafted challenge to the stereotypical received history of the Second World War' The Times.
'Kerr is a master of evoking the spirit of the age' Financial Times.
'Rich, compelling, beautifully written and with a central character that it's impossible not to admire' Daily Mail.
'A brilliantly crafted challenge to the stereotypical received history of the Second World War' The Times.
'Kerr is a master of evoking the spirit of the age' Financial Times.
'Rich, compelling, beautifully written and with a central character that it's impossible not to admire' Daily Mail.
Product Description
A man doesn't work for his enemies unless he has little choice in the matter.' So says Bernie Gunther. It is 1954 and Bernie is in Cuba. Tiring of his increasingly dangerous work spying on Meyer Lansky, Bernie acquires a boat and a beautiful companion and quits the island. But the US Navy has other ideas, and soon he finds himself in a place with which he is all too familiar - a prison cell. After exhaustive questioning, he is flown back to Berlin and yet another prison cell with a proposition: work for French intelligence or hang for murder. The job is simple: he is to meet and greet POWs returning to Germany and to look out for one in particular, a French war criminal and member of the French SS who has been posing as a German Wehrmacht officer. The French are anxious to catch up with this man and deal with him in their own ruthless way. But Bernie's past as a German POW in Russia is about to catch up with him - in a way he could never have foreseen. Bernie Gunther's seventh outing delivers more of the fast-paced and quick-witted action that we have come to expect from Philip Kerr. Set in Cuba, a Soviet POW camp, Paris and Berlin, and ranging over a period of twenty years from the Thirties to the Fifties, Field Grey is an outstanding thriller by a writer at the top of his game.
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
20 of 20 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
In BERLIN NOIR, the trilogy that begins Kerr's Bernie Gunther series, we are introduced to Bernie Gunther in the pre-war Nazi-era Berlin, and then we see him again shortly after the war ends. Fifteen years, and many other (non-Bernie) books later, Bernie Gunther returned in THE ONE FROM THE OTHER, set in 1949. The next book, A QUIET FLAME, finds Bernie on the run in 1950 and living in Argentina under an assumed name.
These first five novels in the Bernie Gunther saga made me wonder about Bernie in the years before the Nazi assumption of power and what Bernie was doing during the war. In the sixth novel in the series, 2009's IF THE DEAD RISE NOT, we learn the answer to the first question. The book begins with Bernie having left Argentina for pre-Castro Havana, but it then flashes back to Berlin in 1934, as the Nazis consolidate their power.
Now, in FIELD GREY, the seventh novel in the series, we see what Bernie did during the war, during the chaos of the immediate postwar period and in 1954, when he is spirited back to Europe and made a pawn in the deadly espionage games of the various spy agencies engaged in the Cold War.
In recent years, long-secret documents about Russian activities during WW2 and the actions of the East German secret police before the fall of the Berlin Wall have been made available. It is apparent that Philip Kerr has some familiarity with the the history revealed by those documents. This book is packed with information about so-called police actions in eastern Europe during the war, the treatment of German POWs by the Russians, the Russians' treatment of their own returning POWs and the machinations of the victorious Allied powers as the joy of defeating the Nazis gave way to the Cold War struggle for advantage in Europe, particularly in Germany.
Bernie Gunther is in the thick of these historic events. He is an intelligence officer and part of a police battalion during the war, a prisoner of the Soviets in several nightmarish camps, imprisoned again in France, and then a reluctant field agent for both the French and US intelligence services.
A thread running through all of Bernie's history in FIELD GREY is Erich Mielke, a communist Bernie saved from death by a Nazi gang in the 1930s. Mielke is then accused of murdering two Berlin policemen and flees to the Soviet Union. He later crosses paths with Bernie when he is interned in southern France after the Spanish Civil War, again when Bernie is a POW and yet again when Bernie has been put into play by the CIA in 1954.
Although the product description of FIELD GREY would have you believe that the book is about Bernie's mission to capture a French war criminal called Edgard de Boudel, that is a very minor part of the book's plot. The plot is much more about the years-long chess game between Bernie and Mielke, and Bernie's role as a pawn in the ambitions of one power after another: the Nazis (particularly Reinhard Heydrich), the Soviets and the intelligence services of France, the Soviet Union and the US.
The story is enthralling, though I have to deduct one star for the confusing way the story jumps from one time and place to another, and for some lack of clarity in the description of the double- and triple-crossing of the various players in the spy games. Anyone who has enjoyed the previous Bernie Gunther books and who has an interest in the historical events described should find this a worthwhile read despite these flaws. I'm looking forward to finding out more of Bernie's history.
These first five novels in the Bernie Gunther saga made me wonder about Bernie in the years before the Nazi assumption of power and what Bernie was doing during the war. In the sixth novel in the series, 2009's IF THE DEAD RISE NOT, we learn the answer to the first question. The book begins with Bernie having left Argentina for pre-Castro Havana, but it then flashes back to Berlin in 1934, as the Nazis consolidate their power.
Now, in FIELD GREY, the seventh novel in the series, we see what Bernie did during the war, during the chaos of the immediate postwar period and in 1954, when he is spirited back to Europe and made a pawn in the deadly espionage games of the various spy agencies engaged in the Cold War.
In recent years, long-secret documents about Russian activities during WW2 and the actions of the East German secret police before the fall of the Berlin Wall have been made available. It is apparent that Philip Kerr has some familiarity with the the history revealed by those documents. This book is packed with information about so-called police actions in eastern Europe during the war, the treatment of German POWs by the Russians, the Russians' treatment of their own returning POWs and the machinations of the victorious Allied powers as the joy of defeating the Nazis gave way to the Cold War struggle for advantage in Europe, particularly in Germany.
Bernie Gunther is in the thick of these historic events. He is an intelligence officer and part of a police battalion during the war, a prisoner of the Soviets in several nightmarish camps, imprisoned again in France, and then a reluctant field agent for both the French and US intelligence services.
A thread running through all of Bernie's history in FIELD GREY is Erich Mielke, a communist Bernie saved from death by a Nazi gang in the 1930s. Mielke is then accused of murdering two Berlin policemen and flees to the Soviet Union. He later crosses paths with Bernie when he is interned in southern France after the Spanish Civil War, again when Bernie is a POW and yet again when Bernie has been put into play by the CIA in 1954.
Although the product description of FIELD GREY would have you believe that the book is about Bernie's mission to capture a French war criminal called Edgard de Boudel, that is a very minor part of the book's plot. The plot is much more about the years-long chess game between Bernie and Mielke, and Bernie's role as a pawn in the ambitions of one power after another: the Nazis (particularly Reinhard Heydrich), the Soviets and the intelligence services of France, the Soviet Union and the US.
The story is enthralling, though I have to deduct one star for the confusing way the story jumps from one time and place to another, and for some lack of clarity in the description of the double- and triple-crossing of the various players in the spy games. Anyone who has enjoyed the previous Bernie Gunther books and who has an interest in the historical events described should find this a worthwhile read despite these flaws. I'm looking forward to finding out more of Bernie's history.
40 of 43 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
This is Philip Kerr's 7th outing in the continuing story of Bernie Gunther and delves into his past, "What Bernie did in WW2",a question always in the background in the previous 5 volumes. But first a minor mystery, the plot summary given above, and that printed on the flyleaf of this the UK 1ST edition is not the novel that you will read. No prison on the Isle of Pines, Cuba, certainly no Fidel Castro nor a French intelligence officer named Thibaud. Does this refer to a rejected early draft? Or perhaps to a different version to be published elsewhere? Who knows?
Putting the foregoing aside, this is in fact a tremendous furious page turning read. The first two thirds delve into Bernie's unwilling service with the SD on the Eastern Front, as he tells his story to various CIA and SDECE Intelligence officers, and is drawn equally unwillingly into a current 1954 operation targeting a senior STASI Officer in the DDR.
However, Bernie as ever, is a born survivor, and tells his interrogators ( and us the readers ) only an edited version of his perceived subjective truth, and Bernie still keeps some essential details hidden from all concerned.
We have followed Bernie's progress from Berlin in 1931 to the very different Berlin of 1954. He's now 58 years old and perhaps can at last escape his past.
But I hope not, there's still some life in the old bull from the Alex. Happy wil be the day when we meet him yet again.
An excellent read, thoroughly and highly recommended.
Putting the foregoing aside, this is in fact a tremendous furious page turning read. The first two thirds delve into Bernie's unwilling service with the SD on the Eastern Front, as he tells his story to various CIA and SDECE Intelligence officers, and is drawn equally unwillingly into a current 1954 operation targeting a senior STASI Officer in the DDR.
However, Bernie as ever, is a born survivor, and tells his interrogators ( and us the readers ) only an edited version of his perceived subjective truth, and Bernie still keeps some essential details hidden from all concerned.
We have followed Bernie's progress from Berlin in 1931 to the very different Berlin of 1954. He's now 58 years old and perhaps can at last escape his past.
But I hope not, there's still some life in the old bull from the Alex. Happy wil be the day when we meet him yet again.
An excellent read, thoroughly and highly recommended.
2 of 2 people found the following review helpful
Format:Hardcover
Directly following on from `If the Dead Rise Not' the seventh Bernie Gunther novel `Field Grey' begins in Cuba with Gunther attempting to flee to Haiti but instead after the plan goes awry he is returned to Berlin. Thereafter the labyrinthine plot jumps around somewhat as what happened to him during the war is revealed as well as a pivotal incident from 1931. The part set in 1954 adds to the complexity with a whole series of double crosses being invoked as once again Gunther is forced into playing people off against each other as he is denied the chance of a quiet life. Although still enjoyable this was a less successful instalment than the previous ones as the ever shifting story required a lot of concentration without it becoming confusing. Also the novels have changed greatly in terms of plot, tone and character since the original `Berlin Noir' trilogy. It was interesting to find out what Gunther did in the war but his personality was more fascinating when some mystique was retained as in the earlier novels. His character, as a private detective, seemed to work better in the pre-Second World War years and its more immediate aftermath where his first person narration was a wonderful device for exploring that period of German history. However it doesn't seem to quite come off in a story set mostly during both the Second World War and the Cold War and where his character has morphed more into spy. Even allowing for the fact that Kerr has had to do something different in order to keep the series going it's starting to become debatable as to just how much more mileage he can get from Bernie Gunther as he approaches sixty.
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Most Recent Customer Reviews
Intricate plotting
Field Grey is the seventh Bernie Gunther novel. In my view it's one of the best crime series presently being written. Read more
Published 16 days ago by Rob Kitchin
The runt of the litter
I'm interested in the history of Nazi Germany and in German culture generally, and I like a good thriller, so the Bernie Gunther series is ideal for me. Read more
Published 1 month ago by Harry Callahan
Quadruple Cross - Trust Nothing and Nobody!
As a lapsed fan of Bernhard Gunther, I approached this novel with fond memories of gripping hard-cased characters wrapped in historical fact and vivid context. Read more
Published 3 months ago by M
In the cloak of Natzi-ism
Philip Kerr writes compellingly and amusingly of a time in Germany I hope the world can beware of. His historical work is convincing and the story lines are also captivating. Read more
Published 4 months ago by jamieson boyd
Full of Details
Also published under the title "Field Gray"
Book 7 in the Bernie Gunther mystery series
In this story Bernie Gunther reflects on his past, the good the bad... Read more
Book 7 in the Bernie Gunther mystery series
In this story Bernie Gunther reflects on his past, the good the bad... Read more
Published 4 months ago by Toni Osborne
Field Grey
I really really like Philip Kerr's style - I have read nearly all his books. This one was well crafted, flitting appropriately in it's narrative style between the Second World War... Read more
Published 4 months ago by agoward
most powerful so far
Number 7 in the Bernie series. I found it the most powerful, with ghastly renderings of the horrors of war in the East, together with Soviet camps etc. Read more
Published 4 months ago by Ramses
Saved by the historical research
What saved the book for me was the way Kerr ranged over the whole German POW experience after WWII. At times, this does slow the plot down, but it provides the reader, who wishes... Read more
Published 6 months ago by G. John
Haunting and compelling
Phillip Kerr has really created something special in Bernie Gunther. In so many ways he is the cliched, smart mouthed private dick. Read more
Published 6 months ago by Mr. A. I. Harrison
hard bolied detective, femmes fatales and nazis. what else do you...
I have just finished reading through the Bernie Gunther series so far, and I am impressed! I read the seven novels in the order they were published and I went through them back to... Read more
Published 7 months ago by A. Lake
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