Prague Fatale (Philip Kerr) and Berlin Nightfall (Jack Grimwood)
It is the best testimony to the writing of Philip Kerr that after reading a few chapters of Prague Fatale I realised I have already read it.
I was sufficiently engaged and engrossed to continue to its end.
It’s set in the Nazi Protectorate of Bohemia when Reinhard Heydrich, the ruthless governor, sends for Inspector Bernie Gunther fearing he might be poisoned.
Ironically, of course, he was killed by the Czech Resistance.
However, the real motive is to identify a traitor staying in Heydrich’s country estate.
This was owned once by a rich Jewish family the Bloch-Bauers.
Art lovers will recognise that name as Adele Bloch-Bauer was painted by Gustav Klimt and her niece successfully recovered the painting in court proceedings from the Belvedere Gallery in Vienna.
It is not Heydrich who is killed but one of his adjutants Kuchner, in his room locked from the inside.
The murder is similar to that of Roger Ackroyd in an Agatha Christie mystery. Gunther solves both mysteries. In so doing his lover Arianna is captured and tortured by the Nazis.
The novel reflects the best and worst of Philip Kerr.
The best is his sense of location and his knowledge of the Third Reich.
You have a picture of Heydrich as graphic as any biography. He was one of the real monsters of the Nazi regime.
The worst are Kerr’s efforts to emulate Raymond Chandler and his lack of originality as, aside from Gunther and Ariana, the characters are real and did not have to be invented and the style of murder is cribbed from Agatha Christie.
Once is enough for Berlin Nightfall by Jack Grimwood.
This is set in Berlin at the time of Mrs Thatcher and Gorbachev’s peristroika.
Major Fox of British intelligence is tasked with bringing back a gay Professor who has defected to the other side.
With too many flashbacks the plot is hard to follow.
This is made all the more difficult as Fox, after apparently being shot by the Baltic Sea, makes a comeback in a mortuary and his daughter, who dies in a car accident, reappearing before his kidnapped son.
Magic realism meets espionage thriller but not convincingly.
