Summer, 1928. Berlin, a city where nothing is verboten. In the night streets, political gangs wander, looking for fights. Daylight reveals a beleaguered populace barely recovering from the postwar inflation, often jobless, reeling from the reparations imposed by the victors. At central police HQ, the Murder Commission has its hands full. A killer is on the loose, and though he scatters many clues, each is a dead end. It's almost as if he is taunting the cops. Meanwhile, the press is having a field day. This is what Bernie Gunther finds on his first day with the Murder Commission. He's been taken on because the people at the top have noticed him --- they think he has the makings of a first-rate detective. But not just yet. Right now, he has to listen and learn.

Bernie Gunther has a new name, a chip on his shoulder and a dead-end career when an old friend arrives to repay a debt and encourages "Christoph Ganz" to take a job as a claims adjuster in a major German insurance company with a client in Athens, Greece. Bernie begins to investigate a claim by Siegfried Witzel, a brutish former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. Witzel's claimed losses are large and may be the stolen spoils of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. But when Bernie tries to confront Witzel, he finds that someone else has gotten to him first, leaving a corpse in his place. Enter Lieutenant Leventis, who recognizes in this case the highly grotesque style of a killer he investigated during the height of the war.

In PRUSSIAN BLUE, Philip Kerr brings our compromised former Berlin bull and unwilling SS officer Bernie Gunther --- now hiding out on the French Riviera --- face to face with an old and dangerous enemy. Cornered and with his cover blown, Gunther finds himself back in a cat-and-mouse game that, even a decade after Germany’s defeat, continues to shadow his life. Forced to make a run for it before the French sûreté arrest him for murder or the GDR’s Stasi succeed in killing him, Gunther heads for Berlin, hoping there are still a few old friends left who can help.

The war is over. Bernie Gunther, our sardonic former Berlin homicide detective and unwilling SS officer, is now living on the French Riviera. He 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. W. Somerset Maugham is looking for someone to fill that fourth seat, but he is also seeking some professional advice. Maugham is being blackmailed --- perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle, or because of something in his past. For once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British secret service, and the people now blackmailing him are spies.

A beautiful actress, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister --- close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and flagrant libertine. And Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide bull, now forced to do favors for Joseph Goebbels at the Propaganda Minister’s command. This time, the favor is personal. And this time, nothing is what it seems.

Gil Martins, an agent with the FBI’s Domestic Terrorism Unit in Houston, confronts the violence generated by extremism within our nation’s borders every day. But when Gil discovers that he played a key role in wrongly condemning an innocent man to death row, it shakes his faith. As Gil investigates both cases, he realizes that there may be a connection --- answering his prayers in a most terrifying way.

A month has passed since the stunning defeat at Stalingrad. Though Hitler insists Germany is winning the war, commanders on the ground know better. Now word has reached Berlin of a Red massacre of Polish officers in the Katyn Forest near Smolensk. For once, both the Wehrmacht and Propaganda Minister Goebbels want the same thing: irrefutable evidence of this Russian atrocity. Both parties agree that the ensuing investigation must be overseen by a professional trained in sifting evidence and interrogating witnesses. That man is Bernie Gunther.

September 1941: Reinhard Heydrich is hosting a gathering to celebrate his appointment as Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. He has chosen his guests with care. All are high-ranking Party members, and each is a suspect in a crime as yet to be committed: the murder of Heydrich himself. Indeed, a murder does occur, but the victim is a young adjutant on Heydrich’s staff.