In this Edgar® Award-nominated novel in Philip Kerr’s New York Times bestselling series, former detective and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther is on the hunt for a beautiful femme fatale... Berlin, 1942. Three players take the stage. The first, a gorgeous actress—the rising star of a giant German film company controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The second, the very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister Joseph Goebbels—a close confidant of Hitler, ambitious schemer, and flagrant libertine. Finally, there's Bernie Gunther—a former Berlin homicide bull now forced to run errands at the Propaganda Minister’s command. When Goebbels tasks Bernie with finding the woman the press have dubbed “the German Garbo,” his errand takes him from Zurich to Zagreb to the killing fields of Croatia. It is there that Bernie finds himself in a world of mindless brutality where everyone has a hidden agenda—perfect territory for a true cynic whose instinct is to trust no one.

"The tenth installment of the Bernie Gunther series by the author of PRAGUE FATALE and A MAN WITHOUT BREATH"--

Former detective and reluctant SS officer Bernie Gunther must infiltrate a brutal world of spies, partisan terrorists, and high-level traitors in this “clever and compelling”(The Daily Beast) New York Times bestseller from Philip Kerr. Berlin, 1941. Bernie is back from the Eastern Front, once again working homicide in Berlin's Kripo and answering to Reinhard Heydrich, a man he both detests and fears. Heydrich has been newly named Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. Tipped off that there is an assassin in his midst, he orders Bernie to join him at his country estate outside Prague, where he has invited some of the Third Reich's most odious officials to celebrate his new appointment. One of them is the would-be assassin. Bernie can think of better ways to spend a beautiful autumn weekend, but, as he says, “You don't say no to Heydrich and live.”

Detective Bernie Gunther navigates two corrupt regimes in this “richly satisfying mystery...that evokes the noir sensibilities of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald while breaking new ground of its own”(Los Angeles Times). Berlin, 1934. Former policeman Bernie Gunther, now a hotel detective, finds himself caught between warring factions of the Nazi apparatus as Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, connive to soft-pedal Nazi anti-Semitism before the 1936 Olympiad... Havana, 1954. Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power; Castro is in prison; and the American Mafia is gaining a stranglehold on Cuba’s exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, after being kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced with a relatively peaceful new life. But he discovers that he cannot truly outrun his past when he collides with an old love and a vicious killer from his Berlin days...

When Bernie Gunther takes on a blackmail case and gets involved in the affairs of British spies, the former detective risks exposing his own dark past in this thrilling novel hailed by The New York Times Book Review as “one of Kerr’s best.” Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, 1956. Having gone into hiding in the French Riviera, Bernie Gunther is working as a concierge at the Grand-Hôtel under a false name. His days and nights consist of maneuvering drunks to their rooms, shooing away prostitutes in search of trade, and answering the mindless questions posed by the absurdly rich guests—needless to say, he’s miserable. Now, the man who was once a homicide detective and unwilling SS officer in Hitler’s Third Reich is simply the person you turn to for touring tips or if you need a bridge partner. As it just so happens, a rich and famous writer needs someone to fill the fourth seat in a regular game at the Villa Mauresque. But Somerset Maugham wants Bernie to help him get out of a game far more dangerous than bridge. Maugham is being blackmailed—perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle, or perhaps because, once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service...

An NPR Book of the Year A Crime Reads Best Crime Book of 2018 A vicious murder puts Bernie Gunther on the trail of World War 2 criminals in Greece in this riveting historical thriller in Philip Kerr's New York Times bestselling series. Munich, 1956. Bernie Gunther has a new name, a chip on his shoulder, and a dead-end career when an old friend arrives to repay a debt and encourages "Christoph Ganz" to take a job as a claims adjuster in a major German insurance company with a client in Athens, Greece. Under the cover of his new identity, Bernie begins to investigate a claim by Siegfried Witzel, a brutish former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. Witzel's claimed losses are large , and, even worse, they may be the stolen spoils of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. But when Bernie tries to confront Witzel, he finds that someone else has gotten to him first, leaving a corpse in his place. Enter Lieutenant Leventis, who recognizes in this case the highly grotesque style of a killer he investigated during the height of the war. Back then, a young Leventis suspected an S.S. officer whose connection to the German government made him untouchable. He's kept that man's name in his memory all these years, waiting for his second chance at justice... Working together, Leventis and Bernie hope to put their cases--new and old--to bed. But there's a much more sinister truth to acknowledge: A killer has returned to Athens...one who may have never left.

When his cover is blown, former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther must re-enter a cat-and-mouse game that continues to shadow his life a decade after Germany’s defeat in World War 2... The French Riviera, 1956: Bernie’s old and dangerous adversary Erich Mielke, deputy head of the East German Stasi, has turned up in Nice—and he’s not on holiday. Mielke is calling in a debt and wants Bernie to travel to London to poison a female agent they’ve both had dealings with. But Bernie isn't keen on assassinating anyone. In an attempt to dodge his Stasi handler—former Kripo comrade Friedrich Korsch—Bernie bolts for the German border. Traveling by night and hiding by day, he has plenty of time to recall the last case he and Korsch worked together... Obersalzberg, Germany, 1939: A low-level bureaucrat has been found dead at Hitler’s mountaintop retreat in Bavaria. Bernie and Korsch have one week to find the killer before the leader of the Third Reich arrives to celebrate his fiftieth birthday. Bernie knows it would mean disaster if Hitler discovers a shocking murder has been committed on the terrace of his own home. But Obersalzberg is also home to an elite Nazi community, meaning an even bigger disaster for Bernie if his investigation takes aim at one of the party’s higher-ups... 1939 and 1956: two different eras about to converge in an explosion Bernie Gunther will never forget.