Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

Magnificent. This could just about be the best Philip Kerr novel since the early Berlin Noir series, and a bit of a departure from some of Berni Gunther's recent outings in that it's a real whodunnit. In fact there's a passing nod to Agatha Christie, both in the plot style and in its telling.

Set in 1941 in Reinhard Heydrich's Prague, Gunther is as ever caught up in the dark intrigue of Nazi Germany. If you've never read any of these, the idea is that Gunther hates the Nazis, and the Nazi leadership know that, but sometimes they need him to solve crimes precisely because he can be trusted to say what he really thinks. This time he's brought in as Heydrich's "personal detective", although soon he finds himself investigating the murder of one of a limited number of Nazi guests after one of Heydrich's dinners.

Of course Gunther is not without distractions, this time the female interest being a Czech-German called Arienne, which means that he's trying to hide some details of his personal life from the high-powered Nazi suspects just as they're none too keen to answer some of his questions.

Wonderfully researched, Kerr weaves his real and fiction characters together quite brilliantly, and the story itself is as good as any in the entire series.

It's probably worth reading all the others in the series just to make sure you get to this one.

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Gödel, Escher, Bach: An Eternal Golden Braid by Douglas R. Hofstadter
My rating: 5 of 5 stars

I'll probably never be able to say I've truly 'read' "Gödel, Escher, Bach" - it's a dip-in sort of thing that would do your head in if you genuinely took it on from cover to cover.

I first stumbled across this book well over 30 years ago but now I've been given a copy of my own. It's a treasured gem. At times you feel so absorbed that you want to climb into the book after it. Whatever, there's something for everyone here, albeit that it helps to have an interest in maths. Escher was that artist who drew geometrically impossible scenes; Gödel is famous for a theorem which said there's nothing you can prove both logically and emprically; and Bach was that music guy. To whet your appetite, Gödel came up with a "liar paradox" sentence: "This sentence is false." (Think about it, and if you're like me, enjoy.)

I suggest you borrow a copy of this, and if you like what you read at first, buy it. You'll never let go of it again - hence "by the bedside".

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