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Dec 11, 2017tjdickey rated this title 4.5 out of 5 stars
Phillip Kerr is at his height in this installment in the Bernie Gunther series. We have some follow-up to a prior plotline with the Cambridge spy ring, but the centerpiece is solving a murder at Berchtesgarden, on "Hitler's mountain" itself, a few months before the invasion of Poland. Kerr's trademark attention to historical detail, and hard-boiled period similes ("a sausage as big as the Sudetenland"!) are very much in evidence, as well as the cynicism about life in National Socialist Germany. This past weaves into a "present" Cold War plot, both of which build to explosive subterranean climaxes.