Masterful!

Like a rat on a treadmill Bernie Gunther is once more caught up in the games of those from his past. It's 1956 and Erich Mielke, deputy head of the dreaded Stasi, has invited Gumther to dinner to put a proposition to him. Gunther refuses. That defiance comes at a price--his life. Now Gunther is on the run. Chased from Nice to Germany, pursued by a former Kripo associate, Gunther recalls the last time he saw Friedrich Korsch.
1939 a mountaintop village in Obersalzberg--Hitler's retreat. Bernie is sent to investigate a murder to ensure the safety of 'the leader' when he arrives for his birthday celebrations. The timeline is short and intense. Bernie is in danger from an unknown killer and from those who give him his orders.
I vacillated between 4 and 5 stars, but came down on the side of 5 as I've kept thinking about the background to this novel long after reading it, the dark confrontations of life in Nazi Germany pre the invasion of Poland, the graft and corruption--the decedent absolutism and unlawful acquisition and manufactured evidence. Into this maelstrom of indifference and power, Gunther is thrown. Always a step away from his own destruction, a witness to the brutal demise of others, harsh punishments, and an ironical longing for the proper avenues of investigations. Gunther almost naively continually tries for the unattainable in this political climate of hate and greed--Justice!
How Gunther continues to come through with some form of conscience and positive core values continually amazes.
Always defiant, if not openly, Gunther tries to be what he espouses--a policeman committed to finding the truth, even when finding that truth puts himself at risk. As the layers of happenings are unravelled, the false premises discarded, and the kernel of truth looked for, Gunther places himself in a dangerous position. The politically correct story, the alternative, that is wanted by those in power is far from what Gunther uncovers. Part of that uncovering leads into hints of the future that we've already seen in another case.
Cleverly executed, Kerr once more comes up with a crime noir winner. Bernie Gunther, disenchanted, hard boiled, sardonic and at at times outright crazy (thanks to the amphetamines he's given on his arrival in Obersalzberg), admirer of cats (look for those occasions) is a winner.

A NetGalley ARC
(April 2017)

I can’t believe it’s been 28 years since I read the first Bernie Gunther novel, March Violets. If you’re a fan of this series, you know that Philip Kerr wrote a trilogy from 1989-1991 (March Violets, The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem, known collectively as Berlin Noir) and didn’t return to the series for 15 years. But since he brought Bernie back in 2006, he’s come out with a new novel in the series every year or two, which makes Prussian Blue the 12th in the series.

In the post-Berlin Noir books, Kerr has generally used a dual-narrative approach, with a post-WW2 story and a Nazi-era story. There is always a connection between the two narratives, and I think there is a sort of chickens-come-home-to-roost feel to the postwar story. Maybe Kerr puts it better, though, when he has Bernie say: “If you live long enough you realize that everything that happens to us is all the same illusion, the same [s**t], the same celestial joke.” And so it is with Prussian Blue.

Prussian Blue picks up where the last novel, The Other Side of Silence, left off. It’s 1956 and Bernie is using a fake identity and working as a concierge on the French Riviera–––that is, until the East Germans catch up to him and make him an offer he can’t refuse. Of course, Bernie being Bernie, not refusing and actually doing are two very different things.

The other narrative, which is more than two-thirds of the book’s chapters, takes us back to 1939, before the German invasion of Poland, but well after anyone with a nose could smell the war coming. Bernie is once again pressed into a sleuthing service by high-ranking Nazi creep Reinhard Heydich.

Bernie’s task is to figure out who sniper-shot and killed a Nazi visitor on the terrace of Hitler’s palatial Bavarian alpine retreat in Obersalzberg. The pressure is intense because Bernie has just one week to crack the case before Hitler arrives for his birthday celebration. But the investigation is complicated by the sheer depth and breadth of corruption and infighting among all the Nazis in Obersalzberg and beyond.

The novel is a terrifically readable mix of plot complexity, action, history and powerful characterization. The connections between the 1939 and 1956 stories are well drawn and, as usual, we are left anxious for more. I haven’t come across a bad Bernie Gunther novel yet, but this one is particularly strong.

This book could be read as a standalone, but if you haven’t read any books in the series yet, you’d be best served by at least reading the Berlin Noir trilogy first.

Another Bernie Gunther book and Bernie’s on the run again. I do like the Bernie books, but poor Bernie. Will he ever find some breathing room? Between the “old comrades” and those leftover Nazis now Stasi (East German) agents, he seems to be always between a rock and a hard place. It seems just about everyone is out to do him in. This book is actually two stories: one in 1956 and one in 1939. They do mesh fairly well, however…same cast of characters in both time periods. His life on the Riviera circa 1956 is coming to a close. After the last adventure with Somerset Maugham it seems that his old adversary Eric Mielke, now a Stasi boss, has tricked him into one “last” mission for him. Bernie, though, knows that it is just a matter of time before Mielke ties up loose ends…the last being our hero. So he escapes the clutches of the Stasi and heads to West Germany with the bad guys in hot pursuit.

In the meantime the story is wrapped around a murder in Berchtesgaden, Hitler’s lair in Bavaria. The time is 1939 and Martin Bormann, Hitler’s right hand man, has been building the area for Hitler while having his hand in all the projects bringing him vast sums of money. An engineer for the project is shot down on the very deck that the Fuhrer uses when he is there. His boss, General Heydrich, sends Bernie to solve the crime. There is much skullduggery and the usual Nazi evilness.

The connection to the two times is his partner at Berchtesgaden, Friedrich Korsch, who is now a Stasi agent, and a place: the Schlossberg caves in the Saar region.

As always I really like these books. You just have to pull for Bernie. He’s as honest a man as he can be and it always gets him in trouble. He has a conscience and it haunts him and makes him a very sympathetic character. I have followed him from the beginning and always wait for the next installment of his cliff-hanger existence.

Another interesting well written story about Bernie Gunther. We go back in time to the early days of Hitiler Germany. The story takes place in two different periods., 1939 and 1959 17 years apart. Philip Kerr brings everything together at the end

This was a really, really long book and I LOVED it!! I think this is my second Bernie Gunther book and I'm wondering why? I know I'm late jumping on this bandwagon, like really late.

As for its length, I know if I'm buying a book and spending $30, I don't want to be done with it in a few hours. I want it to last. This one does that.

Also, this one was about WWII, right before WWII. It takes place in Bavaria during the week before Hitler's big birthday celebration in a town that was all about him. Which was a few months before Germany invaded Poland. And real German bigwigs names were used. It even tells you at the end of the book the crimes they committed, if they served time and when they died. These people were not nice.

The book goes back and forth from that week to after the war to around 1956. When Bernie is tracked down and they need his services again to kill an English agent.

Lots of intrigue, secrets, crimes, lack of ethics, typical German palm greasing and backstabbing run rampant in this book. And, of course, Gunther's humor.

An awesome read and I've got some back reading to catch up on.

Huge thanks to Penguin Group Putnam for approving my request and to Net Galley for providing me with a free e-galley in exchange for an honest review.