'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.
Still streets ahead of most other historical thrillers in its blend of wit, careful plotting and the kind of detail that brings the past to life (Nick Rennison Sunday Times)
Bernie Gunther is one of the more interesting and original private eyes in thriller fiction... as the other nine Bernie Gunther novels show, Kerr thoroughly researches the period he writes about. In particular, he excels in his atmospheric portrayal of Berlin... (Marcel Berlins The Times)
...a return to form for Kerr: it will keep diehard admirers of the Gunther novels happy and will also garner new supporters. As an alternative view of the Nazi world order, it's hard to beat. The Lady (The Lady)
...a satisfying slab of hardcore historical thrills... fans of the sleuth will happily add this to their growing bookshelves, but it will win over other genre-lovers too. (Weekend Sport)
Kerr's novels are modern classics (Simon Sebag Montefiore)
The best crime novels around today (Malcolm Forbes)
The good detective trying to do his best within a corrupt regime, few writers have tackled the theme with the rigour of Philip Kerr (Independent)
