A Quiet Flame (Bernie Gunther Series, #5)
Phillip Kerr, 2008
Gale Group
368 pp.
ISBN-13: 9780143116486
Summary
Bernie Gunther, Berlin's hardest-boiled private eye, returns in this his latest outing. Moving the plot from pre-war Germany to the dangers of Argentina in 1950 and the post-war world of Hitler's most notorious war criminals, Kerr yet again delivers a powerful, compelling thriller.
Posing as an escaping Nazi war criminal Bernie Gunther arrives in Buenos Aires and, having revealed his real identity to the local chief of police, discovers that his reputation as a detective goes before him.
A young girl has been murdered in peculiarly gruesome circumstances that strongly resemble Bernie's final case as a homicide detective with the Berlin police during the dog days of the Weimar Republic. A case he had failed to solve.
Circumstances lead the chief of police in Buenos Aires to suppose that the murderer may be one of several thousand ex-Nazis who have fetched up in Argentina since 1945. And, therefore, who better than Bernie Gunther to help him track that murderer down? Reluctantly Bernie agrees to help the police and discovers much more than he, or even they, bargained for.
Redolent with atmosphere and featuring compelling portraits of real characters, such as Eva and Juan Peron, Adolf Eichmann, and Otto Skorzeny, this novel ends up asking some highly provocative questions about the true extent of Argentina's Nazi collaboration and anti-Semitism under the Perons. (From the publisher.)
Author Bio
• Aka—P.B. Kerr
• Birth—1956
• Where—Edinburgh, Scotland
• Education—University of Birmingham
• Currently—lives in London and Cornwall, UK
Philip Kerr is a British author born in Edinburgh. He studied at the University of Birmingham and worked as an advertising copywriter for Saatchi and Saatchi before becoming a full-time writer.
He has written for the Sunday Times, Evening Standard and the New Statesman. Kerr has published eleven novels under his full name and a children's series, Children of the Lamp, under the name P.B. Kerr. He is married to novelist Jane Thynne. (From the author's website.)
<Book Reviews
[Phillip Kerr] brilliantly evokes the atmosphere of post-war period in one of the most gripping and accomplished detective novels published this year.
London Sunday Times
He's in a league with John le Carre and Alan Furst.
Washington Post
One of the great achievements of contemporary crime fiction.... Powerful and impressive.
The Observer
A bleak tale but a funny and thrilling one.... Kerr digs deeper into his hero's inner life than Chandler ever did...
Daily Telegraph
(Starred review.) At the start of Kerr's stellar fifth Bernie Gunther novel (after The One from the Other), the former Berlin homicide detective seeks exile in Argentina in 1950, along with others connected to the Nazi past (one of his fellow ship passengers is Adolf Eichmann). A few weeks after Gunther arrives in Buenos Aires, a local policeman, Colonel Montalban, asks his help in solving the savage murder of 15-year-old Grete Wohlauf. Montalban has noticed similarities between this crime and two unsolved murders Gunther investigated in 1932 Germany. Another teenage girl's disappearance heightens the urgency of the inquiry. In exchange for free medical treatment for his just diagnosed thyroid cancer, Gunther agrees to subtly grill members of the large German community. A secret he stumbles on soon places his life in jeopardy. Kerr, who's demonstrated his versatility with high-quality entries in other genres, cleverly and plausibly grafts history onto a fast-paced thriller plot.
Publishers Weekly<
Discussion Questions
Use our LitLovers Book Club Resources; they can help with discussions for any book:
• How to Discuss a Book (helpful discussion tips)
• Generic Discussion Questions—Fiction and Nonfiction
• Read-Think-Talk (a guided reading chart)
Also consider these LitLovers talking points to help get a discussion started for A Quiet Flame:
1. Mysteries are informed by Realism, a world view that presupposes the existence of Truth—which can be uncovered using the powers of logic and reason. (This is in opposition to, say, Romanticism or Modernism/Post-Modernism.) To what degree is realism's world view prominent in Kerr's book? What is the "truth" at the heart of the mystery?
2. Be sure to check out the discussion of literary realism in LitCourse 2, one of LitLovers' free online mini courses. The course reading is a Sherlock Holmes mystery, a perfect example of realistic fiction.
3. In terms of plot, mysteries are based on "suspended revelation" — a plot device in which writers withhold information from readers in order to build suspense. Ask yourself what does Kerr let you know...and when do you know it.
4. A skillful mystery writer embeds clues within the storyline. The revelation at the end is organic, flowing out of what comes before. (Not-so-skillful writers tack on surprise endings...which appear out of nowhere.) What clues does Kerr hide...and how well does he hide them. See also LitCourse 6 on plot and suspended revelation. The course reading is a wonderful short story/mystery by William Faulkner with a brilliant display of suspended revelation. Don't miss this one!
(Questions by LitLovers. Please feel free to use them, online or off, with attribution. Thanks.)
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