Philip Kerr

Berlin 1936. Bernie Gunther is a private detective, former Kripo police, specialized in the location of missing persons, especially Jews; a rather lucrative job in a Germany that, in the heart of Nazism, is preparing to host the Olympic Games and more discreetly for a possible war. Years ago, on the Turkish front during World War I, Gunther got the Iron Cross and later, in his police stage, he got a certain notoriety when he solved the case of a strangler named Gormann.

In Palido criminal Bernie Gunther, despite his no sympathy for the Nazis, he is forced by SS General Reinhard Heydrich to rejoin the Kripo with the mission of hunting a psychopath who has raped, tortured and killed several Aryan adolescents. Under the command of his friend Kriminaldirektor Arthur Nebe and with the rank of Commissioner, Gunther returns to an increasingly close police officer to the Gestapo and initiates a counter-watch investigation to prevent the killer from continuing to kill. But the investigation will be complicated when it involves several relevant SS members interested in occult who have a special hatred of Jews, such as Otto Rahn, Karl Maria Wiligut or Heinrich Himmler himself.

Berlin 1947. After the defeat of Nazi Germany in World War II, Bernie Gunther survives as a private detective in a tough post-war in which the Berliners are afraid of the repression they are suffering by Soviet troops (the Red Army), especially in the so-called East Zone of the city. Gunther fought on the Russian front and spent a season in a Soviet concentration camp before being able to return to Berlin with 15 kilos less weight and a slight cushion as a souvenir.

Bernie Gunther is a private detective specializing in the location of missing persons, in a desolate Germany after losing World War II and discovering the holocaust.