Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr

Simon Ps Review
April 21, 2008 by Simon Parker
In 2006, after a fifteen year hiatus spent trying to write an airport blockbuster, Philip
Kerr made a welcome return to his series of Berlin in the 30s crime novels, featuring
Detective cum reluctant SS officer, Bernie Gunther. Despite fears of a tail between the
legs retreat, The One From The Other was actually great fun and a worthy addition to
the series. Fortunately weve only had to wait another year for the next one, and A Quiet
Flame picks up directly where TOFTO left off.
This time the action is split between Berlin during the final days of the Weimar
Republic and Buenos Aires in 1950. Newly arrived in a Peronist Argentina that is
enthusiastically offering a safe haven for fugitive Nazis, Bernie Gunther is in hiding
from Mossad and in search of a quiet life. However between being forced to live among
mostly unrepentant war criminals and being leaned on by the chief of the Argentine
Secret Police to solve a politically charged child abduction, Bernie is once again
required to tread a delicate path.
The key to the abduction probably lies in an unsolved murder dating back to Berlin in
1932. In order to stay one step ahead of the Secret Police, Bernie will need to solve both
cases - but who is leading whom and to what destination? The answer lies both in the
seedy backwaters and political corridors of Peronist Buenos Aires.
A Quiet Flame is a detective thriller of the highest order. The setting is both novel and
fertile and in Bernie Gunther Philip Kerr has created one of crime fictions most
engaging heroes. Most detective novels teeter on the edge of the crypto-fascist (a noble,
lone hero solving the wrongs of a corrupt world) but the best crime authors ensure
their heroes are morally ambiguous and the outcomes compromised and messy. So as a
novel with an ex SS man as a reluctant saviour, set in Nazi Germany and fascist
Argentina, A Quiet Flame offers plenty of scope for moral compromise and ambiguity.
In the end Bernie is clearly a Chandler-esque hero, a side of the mouth, cynical
professional for hire, but also a bruised and damaged hero ultimately unwilling to look
the other way and therefore unable to keep his nose out. Bernie is determined to do the
right thing, if only he can work out what that is and stay alive doing it.
There is a bit of historical, voyeuristic tourism here with cameos by Skorzeny,
Eichmann, Mengele and both Juan and Eva Peron, and Bernies outlook and
motivations are on occasion a bit too good to be true, despite his compromised past. But
A Quiet Flame is a gripping thriller, as involved, atmospheric and resigned as a good
Alan Furst or a good John Le Carre. I cant quite see where Philip Kerr can go next with
Bernie Gunther, but the five books of this series stand as a major achievment in crime
fiction.

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