Audiobooks
Prussian Blue

by Philip Kerr
Penguin Audio, January 2017, $25

When a new addition to Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther noir crime series arrives, fans know precisely what to expect—another circa-WWII adventure featuring its flawed protagonist, a former Berlin homicide detective living with the guilt of years served at the whims of the sadistic and/or insane Nazi high command. His first-person narrations employ sardonic wit, biting humor, and deep-dish cynicism, all attitudes that, while designed by the character to keep his guilt under wraps, provide the novels with a high level of entertainment quite beyond the ordinary thriller, contemporary or not. Bernie’s experiences are usually presented straight or in retrospect, depending on each novel’s not-necessarily-chronological spot on his timeline. Prussian Blue (the name of a painful deadly poison, by the way), set in 1956, covers both categories. At its start, Bernie is a concierge at the Grand Hotel on the French Riviera (just after the events of last year’s The Other Side of Silence) when his unfortunate past again catches up with him, this time in the unreasonable form of General Erich Mielke. The deputy head of the East German Stasi orders Bernie to assassinate a female agent. Instead, our hero goes on the run, dogged by a Stasi henchman named Frederich Korsch, who is as shrewd as he is relentless. As he desperately avoids Korsch’s homicidal clutches, Bernie recalls that, back in 1939 just before the war, he and his pursuer had been summoned by Hitler’s deputy Martin Bormann to a vacation paradise in Bavaria to clean up a murder before the leader arrived to celebrate his 50th birthday. The novel hops from Bernie’s breathless 1956 race from Korsch to his and Korsch’s pre-war attempt to solve a whodunit, complete with an assortment of suspects, while both hindered and helped by heavy amphetamine use. Reader John Lee, no stranger to Guntherworld, is excellent at capturing Bernie’s air of insouciance as well as his frequent expressions of insolence. And, in my opinion, no reader bests him at creating voices dripping in sarcasm, usually accompanied by proper Germanic accents ripe with decadent flutiness. Dealing with two almost separate stories, at nearly 18 hours, this is an unusually long series entry, but who’s complaining? More chapters, more Bernie, more to enjoy.

Dick Lochte
Teri Duerr
5736
Kerr
January 2017
prussian-blue
25
Penguin Audio