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<