A Quiet Flame: A Bernie Gunther Novel Hardback - 2009

by Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr returns with his best-lovedcharacter, Bernie Gunther, in the fifthnovel in what is now a series: a tight,twisting, compelling thriller thatis firmly rooted in history.A Quiet Flame opens in 1950. Falsely fingered a war criminal,Bernie Gunther has booked passage to BuenosAires, lured, like the Nazis whose company he hasalways despised, by promises of a new life and a clean passportfrom the Perón government. But Bernie doesn't have the luxuryof settling into his new home and lying low. He is soon pressuredby the local police into taking on a case in which a girl has turnedup dead, gruesomely mutilated, and another the daughter ofa wealthy German banker has gone missing. Both crimes seemto connect to an unsolved case Bernie worked on back in Berlinin 1932. It's not so far-fetched that the cases might be linked:after all, the scum of the earth has been washing up onArgentine shores state-licensed murderers and torturers sowhy couldn't a serial killer be among them?But Argentina, just like Germany, holds terrible secretswithin its corrupt halls of power. When beautiful Anna Yagubskyseeks Gunther out, desperate for help, to find out what happenedto her Jewish aunt and uncle who have disappeared, he isdrawn into a horror story that rivals everything he has tried sohard to leave behind half a world away.In this new postwar world, Bernie Gunther is a man withouta name or a country, but still in full possession of his conscience.He is 'the right kind of hero for his time and ours.' (MarilynStasio, The New York Times Book Review)