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    Field Grey: A Bernie Gunther Mystery
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    Field Grey: A Bernie Gunther Mystery
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    Field Grey: A Bernie Gunther Mystery
    Audiobook14 hours

    Field Grey: A Bernie Gunther Mystery

    Written by Philip Kerr

    Narrated by Paul Hecht

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    It's 1954 and Bernie Gunther sails to Florida, where he's arrested, returned to Cuba and imprisoned. There he meets Castro, and a French intelligence officer, Thibaud. Exhaustively questioned by Thibaud, Bernie is flown to Berlin with a proposition: work for the French or hang for murder. 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.
    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherW. F. Howes Ltd Audio
    Release dateFeb 1, 2011
    ISBN9781407470986
    Unavailable
    Field Grey: A Bernie Gunther Mystery
    Author

    Philip Kerr

    Philip Kerr is the bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther thrillers, for which he received a CWA Dagger Award. Born in Edinburgh, he now lives in London. He is a life-long supporter of Arsenal. Follow @theScottManson on Twitter.

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    Reviews for Field Grey

    4/5

    260 ratings34 reviews

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    • 5/5
      What saved the book for me was the way Kerr ranged over the whole German POW experience after WWII. At times, this did slow the plot down, but it provided the reader, who wishes to learn more about those terrible times, with important source material. The Nazis had it coming to them, for the bloodshed they brought to Eastern Europe, but Kerr's novel shows the terrible cost the whole German people paid for making a pact with the devil.

      Some people have criticised Bernie Gunther's perceptions of the American intelligence services, as they are shown in this book, but the perceptions of the French are no less savage, and sometimes even worse. All this is leavened by Gunther's own self-hatred for letting himself be hoodwinked numerous times.
    • 4/5
      Gunther flashes forward and back as he reviews his life. Many prison camps and uniforms later he manages to be on the wrong sides of the Russian, British, American and the French Secret Services. Where can he turn to save himself and Elizabeth? Intriguing to the end and another good entry in this excellent series. Remember, he is the consummate Berliner.
    • 3/5
      All over the place.
    • 4/5
      I read the Berlin Noir trilogy a few years ago, which contains the first 3 Bernie Gunther novels. I haven't read 4, 5, or 6, so I'm not sure what I missed. However, 'Field Gray' concentrates heavily on backstory.

      The reader doesn't realize this at first, which I'm not sure was the best strategy. There's a great setup - Gunther ditching Havana (circa 1950s) on a cigarette boat with a sexy dame who just might be a wanted criminal... but all that is soon all-but-dropped, and we've flashed back to the 1930's.

      The real focus of the book (we learn, as Gunther is interrogated, and thinks back to his past), is the relationship between Gunther and a man named Erich Mielke (an actual historical figure).

      The facts (well, the fictional facts), on the face of it, seem unambiguously incriminating: Bernie Gunther was a member of the SS who repeatedly helped a man who was highly placed in the echelons of power, a murderer and a war criminal. But, as the reader learns, what actually happened was more nuanced, and much more complex.

      Bernie Gunther is in some ways the quintessential noir investigator - hardboiled, tough and moody. It's still a bold move to have a Nazi (even a reluctant Nazi) as your hero; the Kerr pulls it off. I'd be happy to read the others in this series - I supposedly won the latest ('Man Without Breath') here on goodreads; but it hasn't arrived yet. Here's hoping it's on the way!
    • 4/5
      I love Bernie Gunther as a character-- sharp, witty, dry, take-no-prisoners (in spite of the fact he is often taken prisoner himself!). He's a man who has been compelled to make hard decisions-- such as being forced into the SS during WWII-- and finds that he has to live with the consequences. There is plenty of a "gray" area here: Gunther is a good man who was forced into a bad situation, and he finds himself, in 1954, being interrogated by people who see things very much in black and white (NB: there is a very good author's note at the end, with suggestions for further reading, that will lead you into seeing more of these gray areas).Bernie's tale starts out well enough-- though the context could be a bit better fleshed out-- in Havana, but things quickly fall apart, and he's a prisoner of the Americans in no time flat. He finds himself being interrogated (and his wry responses to his interrogators are classics of hardboiled fiction) for war crimes, but we learn through flashbacks that his war history, which included time in Soviet prison camp, was anything but devout and blind servitude to Hitler's cause. Some readers may find the flashbacks jarring; personally, I didn't: for me, they kept the narrative moving along as I eagerly switched between past and future to find out what came next in each individual story, but not everyone may have the same reaction.If you're looking for a conventional mystery here-- a "whodunit"-- you're not going to find it. This novel is much more about who's playing who to what end. And you can go positively cross-eyed at times trying to keep all that straight. Bernie plays all his cards close to his chest, and he's not showing the reader his hand, either, until the final reveal. If you're looking for brooding, atmospheric, hardboiled, noir fiction, then you've come to the right place. There's not going to be a bad guy revealed in the end (if, in fact, there are any good guys to be had by contrast), but there's going to be some fine storytelling and suspense along the way. It's cerebral and a complex exploration of rocky territory.Much of your reaction to this book will have to do with your expectations. If you're looking for a lovable hero who's pure as driven snow and is going to use his little gray (pardon the continuing pun) cells to crack a case, then this novel isn't for you. If you're looking for a walk on the dark side, in a fragmented narrative, with an equally fragmented narrator, then settle down and get comfortable: you're in for a treat.
    • 4/5
      I love Bernie Gunther as a character-- sharp, witty, dry, take-no-prisoners (in spite of the fact he is often taken prisoner himself!). He's a man who has been compelled to make hard decisions-- such as being forced into the SS during WWII-- and finds that he has to live with the consequences. There is plenty of a "gray" area here: Gunther is a good man who was forced into a bad situation, and he finds himself, in 1954, being interrogated by people who see things very much in black and white (NB: there is a very good author's note at the end, with suggestions for further reading, that will lead you into seeing more of these gray areas).Bernie's tale starts out well enough-- though the context could be a bit better fleshed out-- in Havana, but things quickly fall apart, and he's a prisoner of the Americans in no time flat. He finds himself being interrogated (and his wry responses to his interrogators are classics of hardboiled fiction) for war crimes, but we learn through flashbacks that his war history, which included time in Soviet prison camp, was anything but devout and blind servitude to Hitler's cause. Some readers may find the flashbacks jarring; personally, I didn't: for me, they kept the narrative moving along as I eagerly switched between past and future to find out what came next in each individual story, but not everyone may have the same reaction.If you're looking for a conventional mystery here-- a "whodunit"-- you're not going to find it. This novel is much more about who's playing who to what end. And you can go positively cross-eyed at times trying to keep all that straight. Bernie plays all his cards close to his chest, and he's not showing the reader his hand, either, until the final reveal. If you're looking for brooding, atmospheric, hardboiled, noir fiction, then you've come to the right place. There's not going to be a bad guy revealed in the end (if, in fact, there are any good guys to be had by contrast), but there's going to be some fine storytelling and suspense along the way. It's cerebral and a complex exploration of rocky territory.Much of your reaction to this book will have to do with your expectations. If you're looking for a lovable hero who's pure as driven snow and is going to use his little gray (pardon the continuing pun) cells to crack a case, then this novel isn't for you. If you're looking for a walk on the dark side, in a fragmented narrative, with an equally fragmented narrator, then settle down and get comfortable: you're in for a treat.
    • 4/5
      Another riveting adventure with Mr. Gunther as an entertaining companion.
    • 3/5
      Kind of a convoluted plot line but an enjoyable read anyway. Bernie Gunther, the Berlin cop, is in Cuba and in France and in Germany. It skips back and forth between WW2 Germany and 1954. There is great suffering as a POW and some spycraft. I will probably read more in the series!
    • 4/5
      Philip Kerr’s seventh Bernie Gunther adventure is a dark and gritty look at Europe before during and after World War II that should appeal to fans of Eric Ambler, John le Carré, and Dashiell Hammett. ‘Field Gray’ opens in 1954 as Gunther is fleeing Cuba only to be seized by the American Coast Guard and returned to Germany to answer allegations that he participated in war crimes during the war. Much of what follows are flashbacks as far back as 1931 in which Gunther describes to interrogators his relationship with Erich Mielke, a real-life German communist for East Germany until 1989, after which he was tried and convicted of the murders of the two policemen. In the book, Gunther is assigned to this case and is tasked with tracking down Mielke and bringing him to justice. While the story itself doesn’t follow the usual course of mysteries or spy novels I did enjoy Kerr’s portrayal of some of the incidents in related to the war that many have tried to sweep under the rug. Kerr’s description of French (yes, French) concentration and Russian slave labor camps were very convincing. One particularly poignant scene describes the return of a trainload of 1,000 German POWs returning from Russia nine years after the end of the war.Bernie Gunther, for those like me who haven’t read Kerr’s other books, is a former Berlin policeman turned private investigator, turned do-what-it-take-to-survive-type-guy whose adventures bring him in contact with many of the leading characters of the era. He’s a quintessential noir hero; damaged, wise-cracking, appealing to women. While there is little original about his character, the settings make Kerr’s book an enjoyable read even though the plot left several questions with unsatisfactory answers.As a series, my impression is that these books should be best read in order to enjoy them fully. There were occasional references to places he’d been and people he’d known that apparently occurred in previous volumes. Even so, I was still able to enjoy book seven without having read the previous six.The review copy of this book was obtained from the publisher via the LibraryThing Early Reader Program.
    • 1/5
      I was very disapointed with this book. I am a great fan of Alan Furst and John Le Carré. I also enjoy novels in a continuing series, which allow a reader to follow characters over a longer period than a single novel permits. I was excited that I had found a series by a writer I had not read before, who promised a style similar to writers I enjoy.While many books from a series are better if the reader is familiar with the prior books in the series, I don't think I would have liked this book any better. The story starts off with witty dialog that seemed promising for the first dozen pages. After the next dozen pages, I was bored with the main character. Because I received the book for free as an early reviewer, I continued reading for 50 pages to see if I might find the story tolerable. The more I read the less I liked the book.I read many novels, and some are better than others. Once I have read more than a dozen pages of a book, I almost always finish it. If a book seems promising, I am willing to give writers time to get a story going and introduce their characters. Some books I consider a waste of my time to have finished (e.g. The Host by Stephenie Meyer), but I compulsively must finished a book once I have gotten into the story. If a writer can get me to read 20 pages, I will almost always finish the book, even when I don't like the story a great deal. In the past decade, this is the only book I can recall having quit reading after getting through 50 pages. Once I've begun reading and been introduced to the characters, I have a compulsion that I must know how the story ends. In the case of Phillip Kerr's main character, Bernie Gunter, the more I read, the less I cared what happeded to him. I was reading the book while listening to the morning news reports of the death of Osama bin Laden. After my wife asked me what I thought of bin Laden having been burried at sea, I realized I didn't care how bin Laden carcas was disposed of, and I didn't care what happened to the main charater in the book I was reading. While Kerr does write witty dialog, his characters are boring sterotypes. Upon encoutering Bernie Gunter, all male charaters have the irrpressible urge to beat him up, and female charaters cannot resist having sex with him. While I did not share the female characters interest in Gunter, I did understand the male charaters' reactions, as Gunter is a unlikeable charater. It is not a good sign if the reader is hoping someone will kill the main character in the first chapter. The first 50 pages of this novel should be used in writing textbooks to illustrate on how to write insufferable cardboard sterotyped characters.If you have an urge to read a book by Phillip Kerr, read a great book by Alan Furst instead.
    • 5/5
      Goodness. Quite the whirlwind and just started. From Havana to 1954 US prisons in Guantanamo, NYC, and then US occupied Germany, Landsberg prison, as Bernie recounts his history during the war. Really interesting and extraordinary. Especially to already know so much about the period. Coincidentally, I've been reading, slowly, Hans Litten's story in "Crossing Hitler: The Man Who Put the Nazis on the Witness Stand," by Benjamin Carter Hett. The infamous Eden Dance Palace incident (for which a young lawyer, Litten, put Hitler on trial) was just mentioned in Kerr.

      Finished. After the above, camps and prisons and torture in France and the USSR, and back to Bernie's US/GDR/USSR/??? handlers. Swinging between the 40s and 50s. Intrigue. Deceit! Incredible.
    • 4/5
      This is my second Philip Kerr book after his science fiction novel which I liked but not nearly as much as this. Field Grey is just a fine historical thriller. I kept thinking about Alan Furst who I consider the master of pre-war thrillers which are notable for their detail and accuracy. Field Grey brings the same eye for detail and historical accuracy except that it is built around the central and recurring character, Bernie Gunther who appears in Kerr's series of wartime and post-war thrillers. This a complex and ambitious book with a large cast of characters in which Kerr shifts time frames back and forth with ease and coherence. It is a long narrative that never seems to lose the edge or bog down. We know that Bernie is on a mission as a reluctant participant courtesy of the CIA and the French, but we don’t really get the full story until the very end. I just really enjoyed this book; it is my first Bernie Gunther but will surely not be my last. As I said earlier, if you like Alan Furst, you will probably enjoy Field Grey.
    • 4/5
      This is also a history lessonBERLIN cop Bernie Gunther is anti-nazi, so I share his horror when, after WW2, he is sentenced to death as a nazi war criminal. But being a victim is par for Gunther. In this and other novels he arouses the ire of Authority.This time he's hounded by Russians, French, Yanks and even fellow Germans. I was surprised the Brits leave him alone, but maybe the author is saving a few research secrets for his next Gunther adventure. Philip Kerr has peerless skill in resurrecting real monsters to spice his fiction. Field Grey covers the horrendous half-century when Fascists and Communists battled to control the world. It is a history lesson, too, and a comment on the deceit and treachery that, too often, motivate governments. This book switches back and forth between the 1930s and 1950s, which I sometimes found confusing. Yet Gunther, irrespective of decade or particular conflict, strives steadily for justice. And his familiar wisecracks keep on coming. The end twist is stunning and unguessable.
    • 3/5
      This book, first published in 2010 in Britain, was recommended to me by my brother. I did not realize it has as its protaganist a German detective who has been in many prior novels. The book jumps back and forth in time, from 1931 to 1954 and years in between. i would much have preferred a straight chronolgical account. The "I" is the protaganist, Bernie Gunther, who can only be deemed admirable when compared to other characters in the book. There really is no character one can admire. Many of the characters are historical, and when they are they live or die in accordance with history. I plan to read nothing more by Philip Kerr. If I were to read anything by Kerr I should read the first book in the series, not this one.
    • 4/5
      Not the best Bernie Gunther book, let down by the relatively thin plot. As in the previous two books it progresses the story Gunther's post war, post Germany exile intermingled with details of his wartime experience and then postwar experience. Kerr's fast paced entertaining style keeps the book moving enjoyably but the lack of a good underlying story does mean towards the end I was getting bored. Whereas in earlier books the post war scenario of the Americans and Russians in Germany and Austria is well handled and interesting, Kerr seems to lose his was with the 1950s cold war partion of Germany.I hoping the next book will see a return to form for Kerr and Gunther, if not, I fear the series may have reached its' end.
    • 5/5
      Very few series have held up so well. Bernie Gunther is an anachronism: a post-modern cynic at home in the worst of modernist totalitarianism. There are so many bad guys in this book, that for a while it's like being under water. But not since George Smiley plotted against Karla has espionage been so engaging. The supporting cast are all brilliantly appalling except for one woman, who maintains her decency and humor even though she suffers through the most horrible of atrocities. Bernie surprises you with his intelligence and his ability to survive and endure. This is not a work for the faint-hearted, but for those who enjoy intelligent historical fiction, mixed in with everything from the Holocaust to the "Spy v. Spy" zeitgeist of the cold war, this book is excellent. Thanks to the author also for the excellent bibliographic suggestions in the author's note.
    • 3/5
      Reasonably entertaining thriller following the experience of Bernie Gunther. It is set in the 1950s with flashbacks to pre-WWII Berlin, WWII France, and WWII Russia.A well woven tapestry of intrigue, betrayal and the art of being a detective.Field Grey is the 7th in a series about the character Bernie Gunther. I have not read the earlier novels but that didn't take away from my enjoyment of the book. I do have an omnibus containing the first three novels. I will read them sometime, but I'm not dashing off to find them right now.
    • 2/5
      Not nearly as engaging as previous Gunther novels
    • 5/5
      Philip Kerr is a new addition to my list of favorite authors. The varied consensus speculates that one should read the "Bernie Gunther" series in order. Personally, I believe Field Grey unequivocally succeeds as a stand-alone fictional biography of its unconventional protagonist through multi-layered flashbacks.On the surface, Bernie Gunther appears a bit vapid, but quite emphatically he is a combustible, cunning and knowledgeable former Kripo homicide detective whose photographic memory unfailingly alters even the direst circumstances to his personal advantage. Most compelling in this voluminous and mesmerizing thriller is Kerr's unerring impeccable research which leaves the reader enthralled not only by the intricately woven plot and its irreverent main character, but also pondering the comprehensively accurate historical tidbits peppered throughout.Perhaps, the cover art of Kerr's books failed to entice me, a regrettable error as it is best not to judge a book by its cover.
    • 4/5
      Marred ending of the story by an anti-American bias that reads more like anti-Bushism in 2008 than the sentiments of a 50s German.
    • 3/5
      Field Gray by Philip Kerr is the latest novel in his Berlin Noir series. Bernie Gunther is his antihero who once was a policeman in 1930's Berlin and saw the Nazi rise to power.You can't help liking him for his sardonic humor and self deprecating wit.,. He has done some awful things in his life but he rationalizes to himself that it was necessary so he could stay alive .In this Novel, Bernie is in Cuba, working for Meyer Lansky but tries to escape after Cuban military intelligence wants him to spy on Lansky. He takes along a Cuban women wanted for murder but unfortunately they are captured by Americans at Guantanamo bay as his boat runs adrift. Because of his SS background, he is sent first to a prison in NYC and then on to Landsberg Prison in Germany. He is interrogated by his American investigators who he finds abusive. They want to know about his background in the SS and relationship with some top Nazi officials. The story jumps around but is interesting since some of the characters he mentions are based on true individuals who were Nazi officers during WWII. Many twists, turns and double crosses as Bernie schemes to escape from his captors.
    • 3/5
      Noir fiction has a long and interesting genealogy. Beginning with Raymond Chandler and Dashiell Hammett, this genre has seemingly had a re-birth with such currently popular authors as Stieg Larsson and Henning Mankell. And international noir, with an emphasis on foreign settings, is bursting with new authors and bestsellers.Philip Kerr, a British author, whose niche is novels set in 1930s and 1940s Germany, must then be an exemplar of historical noir. His detective is Bernie Gunther, a good guy with a complicated past in the middle of the spiraling horror of Nazism. Kerr’s first three Gunther novels were grouped as a trilogy titled Berlin Noir. They are skillfully written, suspenseful and evocative. Kerr takes Gunther through the frightening labyrinth of the Nazi hierarchy as he finds himself trapped between powerful conflicting forces. Field Gray is Kerr’s seventh Bernie Gunther novel. The time period is now the early 1950s and Bernie is surviving in the shady fringes of Cuban society by working for the . He is picked up by the US Navy and taken to Guantanamo for interrogation. Thus begins a detailed and fascinating story that with the help of flashbacks takes Bernie back to the nightmare of the Eastern Front to the time when he wore field gray in the fight against the Russians.This is in many ways a re-telling of Bernie Gunther’s story, with many blanks filled in.There is tension between Gunther and a series of interrogators as he is moved from Guantanamo, to New York City and then to Landsberg Prison in Germany. But of course there is also the tension of Bernie trying to stay alive in the mayhem of the Eastern Front and the grim home life of a bombed and starving Berlin.Bernie Gunther is nothing if not complex. He is a good man who has made many mistakes and has been forced into situations where there has been no simple choice of right and wrong. This is the least favorite of the four Gunther novels I have read, mostly because the complex narrative is somewhat hampered by the frequent jumps back and forth and time. There are fewer characters that last to the end of the novel and so there is a corresponding lack of emotional connections. Additonally, Bernie comes across as bitter, worn out and humorless. But, Field Gray is a critical piece of the Bernie Gunther story and as such must be placed along side its predecessors in this series and considered to be a valuable addition to the series.I am an ardent admirer of Philip Kerr’s writing, of his development of Bernie Gunther’s character and of his rendering of the spellbinding world of Germany in the 30s and 40s. Overall, this is international noir or historical noir at its’ best. I give Field Gray an enthusiastic “thumbs up” but am hoping for a return to a more compelling story line in the next volume in the series.
    • 3/5
      This was my first Bernie Gunther novel so I was a little lost by all of the "alphbet" military and intelligence agency references but was surprising pleased by the unexpected ending - there is some justice in life, at least in fiction.
    • 2/5
      This is my first and likely only Phillip Kerr book I have read (or will read). I found it very hard to follow and very slow in places. I realize that he has written 7 or so other Bernie Gunther books.... and maybe they are better. This novel takes place in Berlin and Cuba.... and I was looking for a mystery but no such luck. The novel is more about how low people will go.... in being evil, mean spirited and the like. No sunshine in this novel..... But then war is never pleasant. the only problem I have with the novel is that the war is over........ but not for Kerr and his characters. Too bad. For those who like gritty novels - with psychologically deep and troubling characters... then this novel is for you.
    • 4/5
      Philip Kerr wrote a brilliant trilogy published in an omnibus edition as Berlin Noir about a detective in the hardboiled tradition. Bernie Gunther had a talent for witty banter that got him punched more often than not, an independent spirit and an eye for the ladies. The twist? Bernie lived and worked in Berlin in the 1930s and 40s, where survival often depended on one's ability to toe the line and no one's hands were clean.He smiled without smiling--the sort of expression a snake has when it opens its mouth to swallow something whole. He was smaller than me, but he had the ambitious look of a man who might eventually swallow something larger than himself.Field Gray is the seventh installment in the Bernie Gunther series. It's different from the earlier books, which concentrated on single cases or discrete series of events, and can be read as a stand alone novel. It takes Bernie from Cuba in 1954, back to the days of World War II and beyond, as Bernie tries to survive the attentions of everyone from General Heydrich to the CIA, from Paris in 1940 to a Soviet prison camp.While the scope of the story is larger than before, Kerr still writes with his characteristically noir style. The plot, however, has grown in scope and intricacy. It's a ride as fast and as twisty as a roller coaster.
    • 4/5
      Field Gray is the seventh in the Bernie Gunther novels from Philip Kerr. For those unfamiliar with the series, Gunther is a former Criminal Inspector with the Berlin police. A veteran of World War I and II, he has a past as rich and dark as his time and place. A long time Social Democrat, Bernie was forced out of Kripo because of his refusal to join the Nazi Party after Hitler came to power. He worked as a hotel detective, then a private investigator in Berlin during the 1930s. When war broke out, there was no escape from fate. His skill as an investigator and reputation for incorruptibility made him the perfect catspaw for SD head Reinhard Heydrich who press gangs him into service with the SS, first in France and then on the Russian front.We pick up Bernie's story in 1954, where he is attempting to escape from Havana, Cuba after a falling out with his employers at a casino. Bad luck lands him on a boat with a wanted revolutionary who shoots an American sailor. Suddenly, the past which Bernie has been trying to escape comes crashing down on him. He's interrogated by one group after another, all wanting to shed light on some piece of his story. Through the incessant interrogations, we learn the details of Bernie's war time service. It's the story of a basically decent, but morally compromised, man trying to navigate the minefield of the Nazi regime and post war Europe. Drafted into the SS to be Reinhard Heydrich's independent eyes and ears on the inside, he falls victim to the succeeding power players of the post war landscape--first the Russians, then the East Germans, Americans and French. Bernie has the misfortune to know all of the wrong people. It makes him a valuable asset to everyone.Field Gray is a sprawling hodge-podge of a novel. It tries too hard to cover too much in one book. Bernie traverses a succession of gray landscapes--Vichy France, a Russian POW camp, and post war Berlin--in search of way to live an honest life. While there is a central story line running through the novel which ties all of these events together, it's an odd choice which has the author painting himself into a corner. The ending, rather than being a clever solution to a difficult problem, is an act by the main character so short sighted that it boggles the mind to imagine the character would make that choice. Kerr has certainly set up the board for a new game. Bernie will be back and there will be new scores to be settled.
    • 2/5
      First off, I should say that this is the only book by Kerr that I have read, so I can't evaluate it as part of his work or of the Gunther series (which I have heard a lot of good things about). That said, it is not a book I can recommend to anyone but uncritical enthusiasts of the hard-boiled cop genre. It has a distinct feel of the umpteenth book in a series being dragged out because the series is commercially successful rather than because the author needed to write it.There are a great many books, both fiction and nonfiction, about the hell that was WWII and its immediate aftermath, and they tend to be pretty grim (I've been immersed in the period recently). This book is grim enough, but it's a surface grimness; the prison camps and death squads don't come across as very different than the routine beatings and shootings that are par for the course for your basic hard-boiled cop. It's all just more grist for the protagonist's loathing of himself and the world, which is no more profound than any other literary cop's. It's a formula, and a well-worn one; Kerr seems to have taken a bunch of phrases from Chandler and Hammett, tossed them in a blender, and sprinkled them over his generic hero and plot, neither of which I could take seriously. (And everybody in the book talks the same rote cynical banter, which makes them hard to tell apart.)I lost faith in the protagonist as a German on page 12, when he compared a beard to "the color and texture of an old baseball mitt." Sure, that's definitely a comparison that would occur to a German born in the 1890s. (Of course, on page 74 he has an American say "A regular Jakob Grimm, this guy." And on page 364 the protagonist refers to "West Germany's FIFA World Cup team"; no human being other than a sportscaster has ever uttered the phrase "FIFA World Cup.") On page 206 he says "The curious thing was I'd really never thought about Hitler" -- in 1954! And the idea that he would be so unaware of what was happening to the Jews -- in the middle of WWII! -- is ludicrous. But that's part and parcel of the author's attempt to position him as a good guy in a situation where there were no good guys. On page 61 he tells his commanding officer in Minsk, SS-Standartenführer Mundt, "I don't much like waging war on women" and claims to adhere to the Geneva Convention; anyone who thinks this is a plausible bit of dialog is, well, a bit simple.The errors of fact and history are depressing as well. On pages 76-77, Kerr seems to be under the impression that the Germans got to Moscow in 1941, which of course they didn't (the Battle of Moscow was where the Soviets started turning the tide and pushing the Germans back). On page 235 he writes of brutal MVD officers (by the way, the NKVD wasn't renamed the MVD until 1946, another lapse) "only the strongest of us were permitted to survive, as if Prince Kropotkin had been in charge" -- Kropotkin, that most gentle of men, who deplored both violence and being in charge! On page 295 he writes about an "MBC" which presumably should be MVS (МВС would be the Cyrillic initials of "Министерство военных сил" = Ministry of Military Forces), but I can find no information about such an organization (searching in Russian). And that leads me to the mistakes in Russian, which seem to be inevitable in books by non-Russians but are still discouraging: on page 63 he has a "Joshua Pronicheva" (Pronicheva is a woman's name), on pages 64-65 he refers repeatedly to the "Svislock" River (should be Svisloch), and on page 236 he tries to show off with a whole slew of Russian terms tossed into the narrative for no good reason and explained in a footnote -- except they're badly misspelled ("voinapleni" should be voyennoplennye, "klopkis" should be klopy, and "kate" should be khata, to take the worst cases), and klopy are not lice but bedbugs, a distinction very familiar to both Russians in general and anyone who has spent time in trenches or prisons (lice are vshi in Russian).In short, if you want factual information about the period, you could check out some of the sources listed in the Author's Note at the back (if you're interested in the Eastern Front, I highly recommend Overy's Russia's War); if you want a novel about the period that truly digs into the psychic trauma it created, try Victor Serge's Unforgiving Years; and if you want some good old-fashioned hard-boiled action, read Hammett and Chandler and get it fresh from the oven, not warmed over.
    • 5/5
      This was my first Philip Kerr/Bernie Gunther novel and I thoroughly enjoyed it. I couldn't put it down. Mr. Kerr is a master storyteller and I felt as if I was listening to one of my uncles (who fought in WWII and were great storytellers) describe their own experiences. The novel is many stories within a story. Bernie Gunther is arrested in Cuba.His captors discover that he had extensive contact with some of the most ruthless war criminals, and they want to know everything. The narrative alternates between the time the novel takes place (1954) and the stories he tells about his war experiences in 1940. There are twists and turns throughout the book, and if I had one criticism, it's that I started having trouble keeping track of them. (That, and all of the German street names.) But that's just me. I wasn't sure what information was fact and what was fiction. There is an "Author's Note" section at the end of the book, which convinced me that Mr. Kerr had done a great deal of research. I was surprised at the line that said "A lot of Lutherans had seen Hitler as Luther's true heir". Is this Bernie's opinion or a fact that Mr. Kerr is relaying? I'm not Lutheran, but I can imagine that statement could ruffle of few feathers! All in all, I enjoyed Bernie Gunther's insights, cynical sense of humor, his struggles with morality and with right and wrong in a world where he often had to choose between self-preservation and the destruction of someone else. He had a strong will to live, despite the brutal conditions of prisons and POW camps. I just liked the guy.I'm definitely going to read more Philip Kerr.
    • 3/5
      Good but not gripping. Interesting, but seldom clever or fun. (Not that it SHOULD be fun - 1931 - 1954 in Germany with a detour to a Russian prison camp is pretty much the epitome of not fun.)The book is told primarily in flashbacks, or in first person past tense - Bernie's got a great voice so that's a plus, but the format takes a lot of the suspense out of it. His story changes as the book goes on, making you wonder how much of an unreliable narrator you're dealing with. It's definitely interesting. They were interesting times, and the German perspective on them is not one we see a lot of. It just didn't feel like it held together as a single story for me. I'd still probably read another Bernie Gunther book.
    • 2/5
      I have not read any of the earlier Gunther books and was not familiar with them when I started this book. I found it very difficult to get very excited about the book as it jumped around from location to location and back and forward in time. The book was advertised as a thriller and I found it anything but a thriller. Frankly, I was quite bored with the book. I was in Germany in the Army in the early fifties and I could relate to a lot, but still, Gunther's recollections and experiences left me uninterested. There was really no plot--sorry.