The Other Side of Silence: A Bernie Gunther Novel

In the 11th Bernie Gunther title (after The Lady from Zagreb), it's 1956 on the French Riviera at the Grand Hotel, where Bernie, a former homicide detective from Berlin, is serving its rich, famous, and shady guests as a concierge under an assumed name. Europe has yet to know peace as spies from the East and West parade across the continent. A local resident, the renowned and unorthodox W. Somerset Maugham, needs a fourth for bridge—and some professional help with the blackmailing Harold Hennig, a former Nazi and the man who in 1945 murdered a woman Bernie loved. While working for the British secret service in 1937, Maugham partied with some naked men—one being an infamous operative and homosexual who had since defected to Moscow. Hennig has the photograph of the gathering and a tape recording for which he's asking $250,000.