After a 15-year hiatus during which he's taken readers from the Himalayan snows to Enlightenment England, Kerr returns to the war-torn Germany of his Berlin Noir trilogy with a fourth case for sardonic detective Bernhard Gunther. It is 1949, and fed up with trying to run a hotel next door to Dachau, Gunther hangs out his shingle and in walks a tall blond with marriage on her mind and a missing husband on her conscience. Gunther sets out to track down the renowned sadist, one of many SS spiders able to slip through the Allies' dragnet and find refuge in the Americas. Of course, nothing is quite as it seems, and our knight's detached weltschmerz gets a fresh coat of tarnish. As with his earlier Gunther books, Kerr follows Raymond Chandler's playbook closely, adapting his trademark metaphors with all the subtlety of a goose-step and the restraint of Hermann Goring at a knackwurst-eating contest, to say nothing of the relish. Still, the knockabout action should please most fans of classic hard-boiled mystery and historical espionage. --David Wright Copyright 2006 Booklist

Fifteen years after his last Bernie Gunther thriller (A German Requiem), Kerr turns his Berlin Noir trilogy into a quartet. In 1949, Bernie closes down his deranged wife's failing hotel in Berlin and returns to Munich. Drawing on his experience as an ex-cop involuntarily absorbed into the SS during World War II a past that will dog his heels he goes into business as a private detective. His first three cases involve missing persons, including a Nazi guilty of numerous atrocities. To track the man down, Bernie has to immerse himself in a world he'd hoped to leave behind, that of the "Old Comrades" who help Nazis flee Germany. But dangerous as it is, the case is not what it seems, and Bernie soon finds himself in another man's shoes, locked in a desperate struggle to save his own life. Bernie's wicked wit is a delight, the plot is gripping, and the historical settings are masterfully developed. Although Kerr sometimes overdoes his descriptions of characters (wildly inventive similes abound), his dazzling touch will sweep readers away. A profound sense of moral introspection underlies the whole. Highly recommended for all public libraries. Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tucson (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.

After 15 years, Kerr (Hitler's Peace, 2005, etc.) dusts off his most compelling protagonist: Bernie Gunther, postwar Berlin's hardest-boiled PI. Last seen in A German Requiem (1991), Bernie's still ready to nail bad guys--if only there weren't so many of them. Ex-Nazis, collaborators of every description, Messalina-like ladies as beautiful as they are wicked . . . the Teutonic melting pot brims with no-goods. As for Bernie himself, well, his copybook is hardly un-blotted. Not that he'd ever been happy about enlisting in the S.S., which, in fact, had been more an impressment than an enlistment. But there are things in his recent past that Bernie isn't proud of, and now he stands an excellent chance of adding to the list. Long-legged, elegant, self-confident Frau Britta Warzok "looked as if she needed help as much as Venice needed rain," but nevertheless she's come to Bernie's office requesting some. She wants him to find her husband, a death-camp commander who is now among the most-sought-after of war criminals. When Bernie points out this unpleasant fact, Frau Warzok explains that what she wants is for him to find her husband dead so that she, a good Roman Catholic, can marry someone else. Leery of the gig but hurting for cash, Bernie signs on. The search does nothing to change his bleak opinion, hardened by a spell in a Soviet POW camp, that "the human propensity to be inhumane" is practically limitless. As a kind of epiphany, it suddenly occurs to our hard-pressed hero that the hunt for Friedrich Warzok has transmogrified into a well-mounted, ill-intentioned, almost-certain-to-succeed hunt for Bernie Gunther. Grim and gripping, with all the author's customary sure-handedness in evidence. Copyright ©Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.

Set in 1949, Kerr's excellent fourth novel to feature Bernhard Gunther (after 1991's German Requiem) finds the erstwhile PI managing a failing hotel about a mile from the site of the Dachau concentration camp. After the death of his wife, Kirsten, in a mental hospital, he calls it quits and opens a private detective agency. A series of missing-Nazi cases sets Bernie on a course that becomes increasingly complicated until he's beaten to a near pulp, had his little finger chopped off and is sent to a mysterious private estate to recover. There he's drawn into a nightmare involving the American occupation and the CIA, and soon his life hangs in the balance. Kerr's stylish noir writing makes every page a joy to read ("The little mouth tightened into a smile that was all lips and no teeth, like a newly stitched scar"). Perfectly plotted, the book builds to a satisfying conclusion. (Sept.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved