From New York Times bestselling author Philip Kerr, the much
anticipated return of Bernie Gunther in a series hailed by The Daily
Beast as the best crime novels around today.
*
Once I d been a good detective in Kripo, but that was a while ago,
before the criminals wore smart gray uniforms and nearly everyone locked
up was innocent. Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting
down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers.*
The war is over. Bernie Gunther, our sardonic former Berlin homicide
detective and unwilling SS officer, is now living on the French Riviera.
It is 1956 and Bernie is the go-to guy at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat,
the man you turn to for touring tips or if you need a fourth for bridge.
As it happens, a local writer needs just that, someone to fill the
fourth seat in a regular game that is the usual evening diversion at the
Villa Mauresque. Not just any writer. Perhaps the richest and most
famous living writer in the world: W. Somerset Maugham. And it turns out
it is not just a bridge partner that he needs; it s some professional
advice. Maugham is being blackmailed perhaps because of his unorthodox
lifestyle. Or perhaps because of something in his past, because once
upon a time, Maugham worked for the British secret service, and the
people now blackmailing him are spies.
As Gunther fans know, all roads lead back to the viper s nest that was
Hitler s Third Reich and to the killing fields that spread like a
disease across Europe. Even in 1956, peace has not come to the
continent: now the Soviets have the H-bomb and spies from every major
power feel free to make all of Europe their personal playground.
From the Hardcover edition."
