Will I love Prague Fatale?

Philip Kerr’s series of books about Berlin detective Bernie Gunther is a stunning achievement. The series weaves together the often disturbing history of the Third Reich, real-life characters such as Goebbels and Goering, and a sharp-minded and blunt-speaking detective everyman who is trying to survive the maelstrom around him with morals and life intact. Prague Fatale sets Gunther unto solve murders at a house party of high-ranking Nazis at Heydrich’s rural retreat. It’s a grim twist on cosy, country house murders.

I loved all the Bernie Gunther books (and really need to read them all again in chronological rather than publication order), but this one, set in Berlin and Czechoslovakia in 1941, has stayed with me. There’s something disturbing about saying that I ‘enjoyed’ what is at times almost a country house murder when the host is Heydrich and the guests some of the most evil men in the Reich, but I was gripped. Bernie himself is one of the strongest voices in fiction.