Greeks Bearing Gifts

January 15, 2018
Set in 1957, bestseller Kerr’s twisty 13th Bernie Gunther novel (after 2017’s Prussian Blue) finds the former Berlin cop employed as a lowly mortuary assistant in Munich. Fortunately, a bit of detective work he does on the side leads to a new job as a claims adjustor for a local insurance company. His first assignment takes him to Athens to look into the case of the Doris, a small ship that was on an expedition searching for ancient Greek artifacts when it caught fire and sank. Bernie talks with the Doris’s owner, a German diving expert, who soon meets a violent end—possibly at the hands of a wanted Nazi war criminal, who in 1943 helped put thousands of Greek Jews (including the Doris’s original owner) on trains to Auschwitz. Once again, Kerr shows Bernie contending bravely if futilely against powerful forces whose full evil becomes clear only at the end. The good news for series fans is that an even better career may lie ahead for Bernie—as a spy. Author tour. Agent: Caradoc King, A.P. Watt (U.K.).

February 1, 2018
In his 13th adventure, ever imperiled German detective Bernie Gunther investigates a string of murders in Greece with possible ties to Nazi war crimes.The year is 1957. The one-time Commissar of Berlin's Murder Comission is now hiding out in Munich as morgue attendant "Christof Ganz," happy to be "far away from Bernie Gunther and everything to do with him." That includes the common (wrong) assumption that since Bernie worked among loathsome Nazis during the war, he was one. After escaping a lethal trap set by a dirty cop from his past, Gunther accepts a job as claims adjuster for a powerful insurance company through influential attorney Max Merten. Sent to Athens to assess the sinking of a ship, he encounters a serious setback when its owner, former Wehrmacht Navy man Siegfried Witzel, is found shot through the eyes. Recognizing the M.O. as identical to the one used by a murderer during the war, a Greek cop named Leventis makes Gunther stay on the case, which points back to the confiscation of valuables from tens of thousands of Jews from Salonika who were sent to Auschwitz. In typical top form, Kerr (Prussian Blue, 2017, etc.) provides valuable insights into the times, exposing the moral failings of Adenauer's amnesty for Nazi war criminals and the widespread hatred of Germans in Greece, which in the face of Germany's so-called economic miracle has yet to receive a penny in reparations. As ever, Gunther's mordant witticisms run through the book. Of a tall, attractive woman offering him her charms, he says, "Her dark brown hair was as long as Rapunzel's and I was seriously thinking of weaving it into a ladder so that I might climb up and kiss her."Inspired by real people and events, the latest novel by the celebrated author of the Berlin Noir trilogy is a deep but breezy work in which even the most trustworthy characters can harbor dark secrets.

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Starred review from March 15, 2018
For anyone who has followed the irony-drenched life of Bernie Gunther from his glory days as a police detective in Berlin during the Weimar Republic, through the nightmare of the Hitler era, and on to his regret-stained postwar years, it should come as little surprise that, in this thirteenth episode, Bernie is back in Germany, with a new identity and working as a mortuary attendant in 1957 Munich?or, as Bernie puts it, washing dead Germans for a living. As appropriate a line of work as that seems to a man of Bernie's marrow-deep cynicism, it isn't long before he finds himself with a new gig, as a claims adjuster for an insurance company. From there it's off to Athens to determine whether his company should pay off on a sunken ship, but that issue takes a backseat when a Greek cop gives Bernie a choice: take the rap for a murder that he stumbled upon or help solve it.So begins a byzantinely plotted escapade in which the oft-noted similarity between Bernie and Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe is more evident than ever. The sunken ship may or may not hold a cache of Nazi gold (not a falcon but close enough) that a crew of rapscallions?some evil, some merely larcenous?are determined to claim. There's also a femme fatale on the premises (think Brigid O'Shaughnessy) for whom Bernie falls hard. Beyond Marlowe, though, there's Bernie, looking for a way out of his personal slough of despond and back to himself. Bernie's internal demons have always provided the compelling drama in this series, and here we loyal supporters are granted a ray of hard-won hope. It provides a great moment in an always-riveting series.(Reprinted with permission of Booklist, copyright 2018, American Library Association.)

Starred review from February 1, 2018

Last seen sleuthing on the French Riviera as a hotel concierge in Prussian Blue, former Berlin detective Bernie Gunther is now in Athens working undercover as a claim adjuster for a major German insurance firm; investigating a claim of significant losses filed by Siegfried Witzel, a brutal former Wehrmacht soldier who had served in Greece during World War II. However, his losses consist of stolen property once owned by Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. When Bernie arranges to meet with Witzel, he finds only a corpse shot through the eyes. Although the insurance firm has no one to pay out, who was behind the murder? With the assistance of Lieutenant Leventis of the Greek police, who recognizes the killer's style from similar cases from the war and has waited for a second opportunity at justice, Bernie investigates the deportation of the Jews of Salonika and searches for a murderer who may never have left Athens. VERDICT Kerr's 13th Gunther mystery is an outstanding historical thriller steeped in intrigue with a superb narrative, pace, and characterization. [See Prepub Alert, 10/22/17.]--Jerry P. Miller. Cambridge, MA

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