Prussian Blue

In this 12th Bernie Gunther thriller (after The Other Side of Silence), it's 1956, and Bernie is still working as a concierge at the Grand Hotel on the French Riviera. Over an unexpected dinner, Erich Mielke, deputy head of the East German secret police, blackmails Bernie into poisoning Anne French, a female agent and Bernie's former lover, with thallium, whose antidote is the pigment Prussian blue. To ensure that Bernie follows through, Mielke sends Friedrich Korsch, a former Gestapo homicide detective, to track Bernie as he bolts for Germany. On his perilous journey, Bernie reflects back to 1939, when he and Korsch collaborated in covering up a shocking murder at the Berghof, Hitler's mountain home in Obersalzberg. Back then, Bernie could have prevented Martin Bormann, Hitler's private secretary, from planning the sweeping destruction of countless others. In 1956, Bernie and Korsch converge explosively over haunting issues still lingering in Germany.