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19 of 19 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
A Nice Surprise, 14 Mar 2008
I didn't expect a great deal from this book, I don't know why. I imagined it would be just another crime novel - nothing unusual - but I ended up getting hooked on it. It IS a crime novel but with a few clever twists and set to the backdrop of Munich and Vienna after the 2nd World War it provided some interesting historical facts. Philip Kerr's style reminded me somewhat of Raymond Chandler and was quite humourous and full of snappy retorts and clever asides. I really did enjoy it and the history of the war plus the settings of post-war Germany made very interesting reading. I would recommend this book - so much so that I am now searching out other titles by the same author.
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18 of 18 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
A Brilliant (and Long-Awaited) Return to Form!, 28 Dec 2007
Back in the early '90s, Kerr wrote the amazing "Berlin Noir" trilogy of detective novels set before, during, and after World War II. Featuring the sharp-tongued Berlin PI Bernie Gunther, they were packed with detail about the era, and eagerly awaited by fans of noir crime. Unfortunately, since then, Kerr went on to write a slew of largely forgettable blockbuster thrillers (including his last, the absolutely terrible "Hitler's Peace"). Some 15 years later he has surprisingly returned to Gunther and produces an absolute gem of a cynical noir equal to the original trilogy.
Aside from a lengthy prologue set in 1937 (which finds Gunther traveling to Palestine on behalf a crooked SD officer and meeting with Hagganah and the infamous Hajj Amin El Husseini), the book takes place in 1949, as Germany struggles to put itself back together. Gunther isn't trying too hard though -- with his second wife in a mental hospital, he "manages" his dead father in-law's hotel, which is located uncomfortably close to the Dachau concentration camp. When his wife dies of flu, Gunther puts the hotel on the market and heads to Munich to become a private detective once again. There, he finds his services in great demand -- mainly those of the "missing persons located" variety.
The postwar years were a bureaucratic disaster, and there were thousands of ex-Nazis who weren't accounted for. A series of cases has Gunther trying to track down what happened to several of these, including one involving a stunning blonde who wants to remarry but can't until her husband (a death camp commandant) is proven dead. This is the catalyst for Gunther's getting involved in a very tangled web of Nazis on the run, the Catholic Church pipeline which helped them escape, the occupying forces, the CIA, and all the sordid corruption of the postwar era, when everyone was running some kind of scam. What makes the story especially engaging is the Gunther himself served in the SS, and did things in the war that still haunt him. Like everyone else in the story, he's guilty, complicit, and can't change the past -- but if anything, that's made him more morally rigid and cantankerous.
The plot is very complicated, as Gunther disappears down the rabbit hole of the hunt for ex-Nazis. Kerr keeps it altogether with expert pacing, shovelfuls of colorful metaphors, oodles of period detail, doses of violence (usually visited upon Gunther), sardonic dialogue, and fascinating tidbits of historical record (such as Hajj Amin, German discussions with Hagganah, the Malmedy Massacre, and the Jewish vigilante death squads known as the Nakam). It's great stuff, and makes one yearn for more of Gunther's misadventures. Fortunately a fifth book, titled "A Quiet Flame," is slated to appear in 2008 and will pick up his story right where this one left off!
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10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:
4.0 out of 5 stars
Not quite a sharp as the trilogy, but welcome back Bernie!, 11 April 2008
This is a real surprise, to see Kerr's famous hard-bitten Berlin gumshoe back among the ruins and moral wreckage of post-war Germany and Austria.
If you know the 'Berlin Noir' trilogy, you'll know how well Kerr transferred the authentic voice of Chandler and Hammett into the mouth of Bernie Gunther, sometime officer in the Berlin KRIPO, sometime private eye. Kerr produced two excellent thrillers with Gunther in Nazi Berlin, before moving him post-war to shattered Vienna.
This isn't quite as sharp as those three excellent crime novels, but is a page-turner nevertheless. Kerr weaves his research on war criminals, Israeli revenge gangs, Nazi contact with Zionist Palestine and radical Islamic groups, and the horrors of Nazi (and shockingly US) medical research on prisoners and mental patients, into a compelling plot which drifts a little close to the improbable without ever quite getting there.
A sequel is in the offing, and this book's conclusion strongly suggests it's theme. A great read, and true to the spirit of 'Berlin Noir'. It doesn't look like Bernie's going to get a quiet retirement...
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