If the Dead Rise Not: Bernie Gunther Thriller 6 - Softcover

Philip Kerr

Softcover

ISBN 10: 1849161933 ISBN 13: 9781849161930

Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc, 2010

Synopsis

''One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written'' LEE CHILD

As Berlin prepares for the 1936 Olympic Games, Bernie is caught between violently opposing factions in a story that comes full circle in 1950s'' Cuba.

Berlin 1934. The Nazis have been in power for just eighteen months but already Germany has seen some frightening changes. As the city prepares to host the 1936 Olympics, Jews are being expelled from all German sporting organisations - a blatant example of discrimination.

Forced to resign as a homicide detective with Berlin''s Criminal Police, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. Two bodies are found - one a businessman and the other a Jewish boxer. As Bernie digs to unearth the truth, he discovers a vast labour and construction racket designed to take advantage of the huge sums the Nazis are spending to showcase the new Germany to the world. It is a plot that finds its dramatic and violent conclusion twenty years later in pre-revolutionary Cuba.

About this title

About the Author

Philip Kerr is the author of the internationally bestselling Bernie Gunther novels. If the Dead Rise Not won the CWA Ellis Peters Award for Best Historical Novel. His other books include several stand-alone thrillers and acclaimed series for children. He lives in south-west London.

From Booklist

When we last saw Bernie Gunther, the Weimar Germany police detective and, later, reluctant SS officer in World War II had worn out his welcome in postwar Argentina (A Quiet Flame, 2009). Now it’s 1954, and Kerr’s cynical Chandlerian crime-solver has landed in Cuba, attempting to stay under the radar of those who consider him a Nazi war criminal. But Kerr is well aware that the heart and soul of his celebrated series remain in 1930s Berlin, where Weimar decadence sang its swan song to the rhythm of Brownshirts marching in lockstep. So, as he did in A Quiet Flame, Kerr combines the postwar story with a flashback to Bernie’s Berlin heyday. This time it’s 1934, and the Nazis are gearing up for the 1936 Olympics. Bernie falls headlong for American Jewish reporter Noreen Charalambides and agrees to help her promote a U.S. boycott of the Olympics by telling the real story about the Nazis’ treatment of the Jews. The plan falls apart, of course, leaving Bernie with a broken heart and Noreen on a boat for the States. Flash-forward to Havana, where Bernie runs into Noreen in a bookstore and quickly finds himself in another mess, this one involving American gangsters, Cuban rebels, and Noreen’s frisky daughter. There’s more than enough succulent atmosphere here for two novels, one for each setting. Both stories and both locales deserve star billing and seem a bit shortchanged without it. Still, there’s so much to enjoy here that it seems churlish to complain. On any continent, in any decade, no one does melancholy better than Bernie Gunther, and melancholy, after all, is the hard-boiled mystery fan’s emotion of choice. --Bill Ott

Edition details

• Publisher: Quercus Publishing Plc
• Publication date: 2010
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 1849161933
• ISBN 13: 9781849161930
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 464