Anybody familiar with Phillip Kerr's novels, featuring Bernie Gunther?

[Paladin]

I'm reading the latest one, "A Man Without Breath," and I'm impressed.

The setting is wartime Berlin, 1943. Bernie Gunther is a police detective, trying to solve murders and stay alive, while dealing with problems from the Gestapo and Goebbels' propaganda ministry. Dark, sardonic stuff; imagine a detective story, set in that "Cabaret" nightclub. My favorite passage, so far, discussing the dysfunctional remnants of the justice system in Germany:

"By the winter of 1943, you found your laughs where you could, and I don't know how else to describe a situation in which you can have an army corporal hanged for the rape and murder of a Russian peasant girl in one village that's only a few kilometers from another village where an SS special action group has just murdered twenty-five thousand men, women and children."

Tough, well-written stuff.

[MountainLaurel]

1. Love those books

I've got Prague Fatale checked out of the library right now.

Have you read Alan Furst's spy novels from the same period?

[Paladin]

2. I'll probably read more of this series.

And I'll look into the Furst books. Thanks.

[Paladin]

3. "A Man Without Breath": No.13 on this week's NY Times Best Seller list..... (nt)