The other side of silence
Once I'd been a good detective in Kripo, but that was a while ago, before the criminals wore smart gray uniforms and nearly everyone locked up was innocent." Being a Berlin cop in 1942 was a little like putting down mousetraps in a cage full of tigers. The war is over. Bernie Gunther, our sardonic former Berlin homicide detective and unwilling SS officer, is now living on the French Riviera. It is 1956 and Bernie is the go-to guy at the Grand-Hotel du Cap-Ferrat, the man you turn to for touring tips or if you need a fourth for bridge. As it happens, a local writer needs just that, someone to fill the fourth seat in a regular game that is the usual evening diversion at the Villa Mauresque. Not just any writer. Perhaps the richest and most famous living writer in the world: W. Somerset Maugham. And it turns out it is not just a bridge partner that he needs; it's some professional advice. Maugham is being blackmailed--perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle. Or perhaps because of something in his past, because once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British secret service, and the people now blackmailing him are spies. As Gunther fans know, all roads lead back to the viper's nest that was Hitler's Third Reich and to the killing fields that spread like a disease across Europe. Even in 1956, peace has not come to the continent: now the Soviets have the H-bomb and spies from every major power feel free to make all of Europe their personal playground."
Available Copies by Location
Location | |
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Victoria | Available |
Browse Related Items
Subject |
Gunther, Bernhard (Fictitious character) > Fiction. Private investigators > Germany > Fiction. Germany > History > 1933-1945 > Fiction. France > History > 20th century > Fiction. Riviera (France) > Fiction. |
Genre |
Large print books. Thrillers (Fiction) Historical fiction. Detective and mystery fiction. Fiction. |
- ISBN: 9781410489098
- Physical Description 485 pages (large print) ; 23 cm.
- Edition Large print edition.
- Publisher [Place of publication not identified] : [publisher not identified], 2016.
Content descriptions
General Note: | GMD: large print. |
Series
Additional Information
Summary
The Other Side of Silence
British author Philip Kerr is back with, "The Other Side of Silence", his latest "Bernie Gunther" book. (It's the 11th book in the series, and Kerr tells the reader that Bernie will return in 2017 with the 12th book, "Prussian Blue") Before I review this book, though, I'd like to tell potential new readers of Kerr that the books are not written in any kind of time order. The first three - "Berlin Noir", "The March Violets", and "The Pale Criminal" - should be read first (and they are sometimes published in one large volume), but after that, you can read them in any order. Philip Kerr's books skip around from place to place - Berlin, the Russian Front, Cuba, etc - and years - 1936 up to 1956. This latest is set on the French Riviera in 1956.