by Philip Kerr
Part of Bernie Gunther, book 10
First published 2015
Bernie Gunther has fallen far from his days as a Berlin homicide detective. Now he takes orders from Joseph Goebbels, the cunning Propaganda Minister who serves as Hitler's right hand. Goebbels wants a personal favor this time, one that involves a stunning actress who works for UFA, the massive German film studio under Nazi control. The assignment drags Bernie into Croatia, where the Ustashe militia rules through savage violence. Everyone Bernie meets harbors secret motives in this landscape of systematic murder. The beautiful film star carries her own mysteries. Goebbels plays a deeper game than he reveals. Bernie must navigate between competing lies while bodies pile up around him. His survival depends on the hard cynicism he learned as a cop, but even that may not be enough when nothing appears as it first seems. In this moral wasteland, Bernie confronts the terrible choices that war forces on ordinary people.
Genres: historical-fiction, 20th-century, mystery, crime, thriller
Vibes: dark, fast-paced, suspenseful
Tropes: moral-ambiguity, unreliable-narrator
Setting: Berlin, Croatia, Germany, Zagreb
Period: World War II
432 pages · Hardcover · G.P. Putnam's Sons
Content warnings: violence, war