EricCWelch

). Pelican has released a trilogy of his Berlin detective novels that feature the wise-cracking, ex-Kripo, private detective, Bernie Gunther. The first, March Violets, takes place in 1936 as the Nazis are rising to power, and Kerr sets the scene masterfully. Bernie has been hired to find the contents of a safe that belonged to the daughter of Herr Six, a wealthy German manufacturer. It seems Six’s daughter and son-in-law were murdered, their house torched, and jewels worth millions of marks removed from the safe. Six wants those jewels back. Bernie’s investigation leads him to join an uneasy alliance with Hermann Goering as he finds himself caught in a powerplay between the Gestapo and the Sicherheitsdienst. It turns out that there were really two thefts the night of the murders and that one body may even have been misidentified (no hints, but the ending has a neat twist). Bernie can only extricate himself from the web by catching the man who has the secret to the location of the stolen papers and who is hiding in the only place he thinks the enemy won’t look for him: a concentration camp. Kerr has recreated an authentic feel of what was a very dangerous time, when no one could trust anyone else and death was at the whim of the powerful.