Cynical Berlin cop Bernie Gunther who has, through a series of captivating novels, engineered his way through the pitfalls and abysses of Nazi-times Germany and the opening years of WW2, has not yet reached the end of his travails. It's 1942 and he has been tasked by his Nazi superiors, with whom he has little sympathy, to track down a famous film star, who has attracted the attention of Goebbels himself, to Switzerland, it initially feels like a straightforward break from everyday horrors. Not so, of course. The elusive beauty had contacts with Croatian fascists and complications soon arise under his step, eventually bringing him back to Berlin, and to his own surprise, seeing him fall in love. Sardonic, hardboiled as leather, a voice of sanity in years of madness, Bernie as ever tries to remain an honest man in a dishonest world. A great addition to the series.
'One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written' LEE CHILD
Summer 1942. When Bernie Gunther is ordered to speak at an international police conference, an old acquaintance has a favour to ask. Little does Bernie suspect what this simple surveillance task will provoke...
One year later, resurfacing from the hell of the Eastern Front, a superior gives him another task that seems straightforward: locating the father of Dalia Dresner, the rising star of German cinema. Bernie accepts the job. Not that he has much choice - the superior is Goebbels himself.
But Dresner's father hails from Yugoslavia, a country so riven by sectarian horrors that even Bernie's stomach is turned. Yet even with monsters at home and abroad, one thing alone drives him on from Berlin to Zagreb to Zurich: Bernie Gunther has fallen in love.
Philip Kerr was born in Edinburgh in 1956, and lived in London. He is the author of March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem, A Philosophical Investigation, and Dead Meat. He has also edited two anthologies. In 2011 Philip Kerr was shortlisted for the CWA Dagger in the Library, awarded to an author for a body of work. He sadly passed away in March 2018.
Maxim Jakubowski's view on BERNIE GUNTHER...
A German cop who has moved from the Nazi 1930s to the post-war period, with mixed loyalties but a strong sense of duty which often gets him into trouble. A QUIET FLAME was his 5th outing andIF THE DEAD RISE NOT appeared next in September 2009.
