Field Grey by Philip KerrMy rating: 5 of 5 stars
Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels just get better and better. This one explores some of his dark period in the SS, and there are so many twists and turns in it that the reader has no idea where it will end up until almost the very last page.
Quite a large part of it is told in flashback, a tool Kerr has used a lot since the early 'Berlin Noir' trilogy; after all, given the last of those novels is set after the war, he has little option if he wants to revisit Bernie Gunther's past. Like the others, Field Grey is extraordinarily well researched and it's almost as good as a history book. Once again, Kerr - through Gunther - tells us that there were even worse places to be than a German concentration camp; the Russian ones, definitely, but even the French ones. Gunther hates the Nazis, but ambiguously is prepared to work alongside them if the alternatives are worse.
And once again Gunther finds himself rubbing shoulders with some real figures in history, his reputation as a (relatively) fearless detective earning respect from some surprising people.
The best recommendation of all is probably that the very next book I chose to read was... the next in the Gunther series.
View all my reviews
