Most Helpful Customer Reviews
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37 of 38 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Quiet Masterpiece, 7 April 2008
Fans of Philip Kerr's original trilogy of Bernie Gunther books were delighted last year when after a gap of 17 years, a fourth volume `The One from the Other' hit the bookshops in July.
Barely nine months on and there's a very welcome fifth book in the series. And while reading it, it becomes clear that there are plans for at least one more volume from `the thinking reader's thriller writer'
Ex-Berlin homicide detective and private eye Bernie Gunther finds himself in Buenos Aries, Argentina in 1950 (read `The One From The Other' to find out why), a time when Juan Peron's government offered a safe haven for Nazi war criminals. The action switches largely between Berlin in 1932 - and Bernie's last abandoned case as a police officer when the mutilated body of a spastic teenage girl is discovered - and Buenos Aires in 1950 where he is invited to investigate a case with striking similarities.
What appears to be a simple case turns out to be anything but; twist is piled upon twist, and Gunther unwraps layer after layer until the final shocking revelation is revealed.
Once again, this is peopled with real personalities - Juan and Evita Peron, Adolf Eichmann, Joseph Mengele etc. - and blends fiction with conjecture based upon historical fact. It includes a chilling portrait of the man who was third ranked in the SS at the end of World War II, General Hans Kammler; perhaps the most heinous SS officer never to be caught.
Bernie Gunther is a great creation, never afraid to poke his nose into things he's been warned to keep out of. He's brave, principled and wisecracking - one character remarks he has a 'smart mouth' - and that gets him into trouble. He's a throwback to the golden age of Hammett and Chandler.
This intelligent, gripping thriller is richly detailed and tightly plotted. It has a moving ending (I won't give it away) that cries out for the sequel that will inevitably follow. All in all, this is top stuff.
So why not five stars? I'm benchmarking this against the best of Philip Kerr and it's not quite up there with 'A Philosophical Investigation' and one or two others.
But unfortunately, I have to agree with a previous reviewer's comments; this novel contains a whole slew of typos. Who the heck is responsible for proof-reading these books, and can I please have his job?
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14 of 17 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A quiet and disturbing book, 27 Mar 2008
It's astonishing to me that Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther books still seem relatively little known. All the more pleasure for this reader, then, when another in the series appears unexpectedly on the bookshelves. This time Bernie is in Argentina in 1950, where thousands of Nazi fugitives and tens of thousands of refugees co-exist uneasily. It's the perfect location for some grimy, low-key action.
What a shame, then, that this excellent book has been so poorly copy-edited. We have mis-spelled and wrongly accented Spanish, "dyeing" spelled "dying", "Bernard Weiss" becoming "Bernhard Weiss" after a few pages, "practice" (the noun) repeatedly being spelled "practise" (the verb), "epicentre" being lazily used where "centre" was meant, and so on. Yes, the author must take some blame, but really - this is what editors are paid to pick up.
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3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
"And unawares Morality expires, 1 Jul 2009
Nor public flame nor private dares to shine;
Nor human spark is left, nor glimpse divine!
Lo! thy dread empire Chaos is restor'd,
Light dies before thy uncreating word;
Thy hand, great Anarch, lets the curtain fall,
And universal darkness buries all." Alexander Pope
Bernie Gunther's flame is certainly a quiet one. He's a good detective, but a flawed man. The key though to Gunther's appeal is the fact that no one is more aware of his failings than Gunther himself. Philip Kerr does an excellent job evoking this self-reflection in his most recent Bernie Gunther detective story, "A Quiet Flame".
For those new to Kerr's Bernie Gunther stories, Gunther is a detective. He is German and during most of the series, set in the 1930s and 1940s we saw Gunther working as a detective in Berlin. He is virulently opposed to the Nazis to the point where many of his colleagues accuse him of being a communist. Yet, first and foremost Gunther wants to be a detective, he wants to solve cases and would like nothing better than to be left alone to do his job. However, he went along. Once the war came he found himself in the SS. He's not proud of his behavior and accepts the fact that he is guilty of `the crime of survival'. He says to himself, ruefully, that if he were truly a good man, he'd be dead because he would have stood up against the Nazis.
Now, it is 1950, and Bernie has fled Europe. He is wanted (wrongfully) for being a war criminal after having his identity stolen but he uses his new identity to escape to Argentina. Upon arrival he finds he has exchanged the madness and machinations of the Nazi regime for that of Juan and Eva Peron's. He is forced into taking on a murder mystery that has occurred within the German (Nazi) émigré community, a brutal murder that bears a stark resemblance to a brutal unsolved murder Gunther investigated in the 1930s in Berlin. The book progresses on two paths. The first path is Gunther's reflections back on the unsolved Berlin murder and the second involves his current investigation. The paths not being parallel finally merge and Gunther is left to deal with the startling consequences of his investigation.
Quiet Flame is an entertaining story and one that lives up to the high quality of Kerr's writing in his previous Gunther novels. His characterization of Gunther is first rate even if he never really fleshes out the characters of his secondary protagonists. Gunther is portrayed with a great deal of nuance. There is goodness about him but he is fully aware of how unclean his hands are. This nuanced look makes the more black-and-white portrayal of the Argentine and German bad guys seem somewhat superficial. That's not a major issue though as the excellent portrayal of Gunther and the book's pacing kept me turning the pages. It's easy to paint a decent, flawed man with nuance but pretty hard to avoid the broad strokes when dealing with unrepentant killers.
All-in-all this is a worthy addition to the Bernie Gunther series. L. Fleisig
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