Review by New York Times Review
The touchy-feely vibe of BRITTEN AND BRÜLIGHTLY (Metropolitan/Holt, paper, $20), an elegant graphic novel by Hannah Berry, has something to do with its format - the tall, slim, inviting layout of a picture book - but just as much to do with the intimate, even claustrophobic, content of its narrative. Set in London during some uneasy period when it rains without end on men in double-breasted suits and women in berets, the story tracks the metaphysical crisis of Fernández Britten, a melancholy "private researcher" who has earned the nickname "the Heartbreaker" for confirming the suspicions of clients who hire him to spy on their cheating lovers. After a career of exposing the bestiality of human nature, Britten longs to uncover a higher truth, the kind that elevates the beast and confers nobility on his own sleazy trade. The morose P.I., whose shadow-rimmed eyes and tiny, pinched mouth convey his despondent state, thinks he's found his means of redemption when an unhappy heiress hires him to disprove the police investigation's conclusion that her fiancé's death was a suicide. Instead of bringing her satisfaction or solace, Britten discovers a truth so ugly that his instinct is to suppress it. But what kind of hero would that make him? It's the classic existential bind of the postwar detective: a cynical sleuth tries to redeem his soul through a selfless act, only to find that honesty conflicts with an ingrained code of honor. Although Berry has her bit of fun with the genre traditions - notably in the bizarre detail that Britten's trusted partner, Stewart Brülightly, is (quite literally) a lecherous tea bag that, under stress, infuses in the detective's waistcoat pocket - she writes in a darkly poetic vein about love and betrayal, deceit and despair, in a plot so complex it would give Raymond Chandler a headache. Unlike the generations of trend-hopping moviemakers and novelists who have reduced the bleak noir sensibility to brutal acts committed in picturesque alleys, Berry uses her pen to capture the spiritual desolation of the human figures in her landscape. The lines of her drawings are sharp and penetrating, the monochromatic colors diluted in tearful washes of blues and blacks as she leans in to catch the insanity in a smile, the mute anger in the snuffing out of a cigarette. But the bravura storytelling device is the perspective, the eerie sense of disorientation as she swoops in to examine a parade of toy cowboys in an empty apartment or draws back to watch the rain lash two faraway figures with a single umbrella. From whichever angle you look at it, the truth doesn't bear telling in this cold and heartless world. Every time we're afraid we've seen the last of Bernie Gunther, Philip Kerr comes through - as he does in A QUIET FLAME (Marian Wood/Putnam, $26.95) - with another unnerving adventure for his morally conflicted hero. A Berlin homicide cop conscripted into the SS during the course of the novels known as the Berlin Noir Trilogy, Bernie resurfaces in 1950 - on the same boat as Adolf Eichmann - in Buenos Aires, a vibrant city as depraved and dangerous as the one he left behind. Unlike other fugitive Nazi officers Juan Perón welcomed into Argentina, Bernie isn't allowed to slip into some anonymous job. Instead, he's pressed to solve the grisly mutilation murders of young girls, cases so similar to those he had to leave unsolved in Berlin when Hitler came to power that he suspects the same killer may now be on the loose in Argentina. Pursuing that lead, Bernie builds up contempt for government mendacity, expressing his reckless views in the wisecracking idiom of the hard-boiled detective, rather than the suave tones of the undercover agent the Peronists would like him to be. But while his attitude is fashionably cynical, he cares too much about the future of civilized societies to pass himself off as a pessimist. Anna Pigeon, the whip-smart and normally fierce park ranger in Nevada Barr's wilderness adventures, is all out of sorts in BORDERLINE (Putnam, $25.95). Anna and her husband are drifting down the Rio Grande on a white-water rafting trip, trying to restore her equilibrium, when the spring rains unleash a flash flood that traps a pregnant woman trying to cross the border from Mexico. Barr hits her stride whenever Anna is actually on the river - using a jackknife to perform a C-section on the dying woman and climbing up steep canyons with the newborn in her arms to escape the sharpshooter who keeps picking off the rafters. But nothing else seems to inspire Barr, and the novel's lame plotting, with its obvious villains, is a comedown from her usual impeccable storytelling. Before it ducks into the shower and re-emerges as a "Pretty Woman" fantasy, David Cristofano's first novel, THE GIRL SHE USED TO BE (Grand Central, $22.99) promises to be something special: the haunting cri de coeur of a hurt and angry young woman whose life was stolen from her when she was 6 and had the bad luck to be with her parents when they witnessed a gruesome mob hit. Melody Grace McCartney can barely remember the various identities she has furiously shrugged off since she went into the witness protection program, but she's about to bolt again when she's kidnapped by the mobster assigned to kill her. The hit man is a dark prince with awesome taste in women's fashion, and readers who like vampire stories should go for this romantic fairy tale. But before he went all goofy on us, Cristofano seemed to be headed somewhere more interesting than the Lifetime network. In her first graphic novel, Hannah Berry writes (and draws) in a darkly poetic vein about love and betrayal.
Copyright (c) The New York Times Company [October 27, 2009]
Review by Booklist Review
*Starred Review* The fifth Bernard Gunther novel finds the former German PI and reluctant SS member on a boat to Argentina in 1950, lumped in with the Nazis whom he baited in the earlier novels. It's one of those dirty deals that give noir its color: a Chandleresque, anti-authoritarian private eye forced to travel in the company of Adolf Eichmann, and like Eichmann, counting on the kindness of strangers in this case, Juan Péron and the promise of a clean passport. Unfortunately, the deal gets dirtier once Bernie lands in Buenos Aires and is forced to investigate the disappearance of a German banker's daughter a case that bears striking similarities to another disappearance that Bernie investigated (but never solved) in Berlin in 1932. Could a German serial killer have landed in Argentina and resumed his favorite pastime? The story jumps between flashbacks to the earlier case the milieu of March Violets (1989), the first and best of the earlier Gunther novels and the present in Buenos Aires. Kerr makes the best of both locales, bringing both Juan and Eva Péron into the Argentina segments, but it's in the flashbacks, returning to the sublimely decadent Weimar era, that the idea of a German Philip Marlowe really fits best, and Kerr works it masterfully. But the climax in Argentina is a doozy, too, drawing on historical data about what the Nazi sympathizers there may have been up to and finishing with a rhetorical flourish that evokes both Casablanca and Matthew Arnold's Dover Beach. A bit bifurcated, maybe, but a treat through either lens.--Ott, Bill Copyright 2009 Booklist
From Booklist, Copyright (c) American Library Association. Used with permission.
Review by Publisher's Weekly Review
At the start of Kerr's stellar fifth Bernie Gunther novel (after The One from the Other), the former Berlin homicide detective seeks exile in Argentina in 1950, along with others connected to the Nazi past (one of his fellow ship passengers is Adolf Eichmann). A few weeks after Gunther arrives in Buenos Aires, a local policeman, Colonel Montalban, asks his help in solving the savage murder of 15-year-old Grete Wohlauf. Montalban has noticed similarities between this crime and two unsolved murders Gunther investigated in 1932 Germany. Another teenage girl's disappearance heightens the urgency of the inquiry. In exchange for free medical treatment for his just diagnosed thyroid cancer, Gunther agrees to subtly grill members of the large German community. A secret he stumbles on soon places his life in jeopardy. Kerr, who's demonstrated his versatility with high-quality entries in other genres, cleverly and plausibly grafts history onto a fast-paced thriller plot. (Mar.) (c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
Review by Library Journal Review
British novelist Kerr's fifth Bernie Gunther thriller finds the German private detective in 1950 Argentina, where he has fled with other "Old Comrades" after his identity was compromised (see The One from the Other). Bernie's past as a police officer involuntarily absorbed into the SS continues to dog his heels. Recognized by Colonel Montalban of Juan Peron's secret police, he is forced into investigating an apparent lust murder and the disappearance of a wealthy young girl. The first case has eerie similarities to an unsolved homicide that Bernie investigated in Berlin in 1932; the second ties in with an attempt to seize Nazi plunder hidden in Swiss banks. But the situation becomes complicated as the detective risks his life to track down and interrogate several ex-Nazis involved in nefarious deeds. Authentic period detail, biting wit, sparkling metaphors, and an engaging character whose moral ambiguity places him in perilous situations make this a read to savor. Fans of the earlier series titles will love the extended sections that re-create the grimly decadent atmosphere of the last days of the Weimar Republic. Highly recommended for public libraries.-Ron Terpening, Univ. of Arizona, Tuscon (c) Copyright 2010. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Review by Kirkus Book Review
Hitler is history, but Bernie Gunther, the SS guy with a heart of gold, is alive and well, and chasing dirty rats in Argentina. World War II didn't quite go the way it was supposed tothe Third Reich having lasted noticeably less than 1,000 yearsbut the Nazis are still in there pitching. The setting has shifted to Argentina, that happy haven for Adolf Eichmann, Josef Mengele and the like-minded. From this hate-mongering group, exempt steel-shelled, mushy-hearted Bernhard Gunther, famous once as the policeman Berlin's malefactors loved to hate. True enough, Bernie eventually left the force to put in some obligatory time among the goose-steppers, but what's a man to do when he's a born survivalist? The SS or the concentration camps (Auschwitz, Treblinka, etc.) were the sole choices available even to an iconic sleuth whose case-cracking record had long been the stuff of headlines. " 'You were a hero of mine,' " says Colonel Montalbn, Argentina's top cop, as Bernie modestly averts his eyes. Bernie senses that what Montalbn has planned for him will seriously interfere with his own plans. Having arrived in Argentina the hard wayconsider an unpleasant detour to a Russian prison campBernie now regards himself as a noncombatant. Just find this missing German girl for me, says Montalbn, adding reassuringly that it's the kind of case Bernie has always excelled at. But somehow Bernie is not reassured, since over Montalbn's siren song, he hears another kind of rhythmthe sound of jackboots marching toward him. Warts and allKerr makes little attempt to hide themBernie Gunther (The One from the Other, 2006, etc.) remains endearing, entertaining and eminently forgivable. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Copyright (c) Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
