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Field Gray

A Bernie Gunther Novel
by Philip Kerr
Field Gray: A Bernie Gunther Novel. Marian Wood: Putnam. Apr. 2011. c.448p. ISBN 9780399157417. $25.95. F
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If there's a PI with a jaundiced eye, it's Bernie Gunther. During his 11 years as a homicide detective in Berlin, he witnessed every kind of perversion. When the Nazis grab power, he leaves the force, but Hitler's man Reinhard Heydrich soon sinks his claws into him. (Even a Nazi needs an honest cop once in a while.) Bernie becomes Heydrich's tame dog. In 1940, he's shipped to the eastern front dressed in SS field gray. Fast-forward to 1954. Bernie is in Cuba, working for Meyer Lansky and the mob. Things heat up, and he's caught while fleeing the country. The CIA takes custody of him; they need his help to capture an elusive East German security police officer. But to Bernie, the Americans are no different from the Nazis—"the worst kind of fascists. The kind that think they're liberals." They force Bernie to talk through his checkered past, taking us back to 1930s–40s Berlin, Paris, and the Soviet Union.
VERDICT As always in a Bernie Gunther title (If the Dead Rise Not), the plotting is twisty, the writing crisp, the atmosphere indisputably noir. Fans of hard-boiled PI novels and all readers interested in the dirty history of Nazi Germany will love this book. They don't come any better. [See Prepub Alert, LJ 11/15/10.]
Reviewed by David Keymer, Modesto, CA , Mar 15, 2011
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