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Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, 1956. Having gone into hiding in the French Riviera, Bernie Gunther is working as a concierge at the Grand-Hôtel under a false name. His days and nights consist of maneuvering drunks to their rooms, shooing away prostitutes in search of trade, and answering the mindless questions posed by the absurdly rich guests—needless to say, he’s miserable. Now, the man who was once a homicide detective and unwilling SS officer in Hitler’s Third Reich is simply the person you turn to for touring tips or if you need a bridge partner.
As it just so happens, a rich and famous writer needs someone to fill the fourth seat in a regular game at the Villa Mauresque. But Somerset Maugham wants Bernie to help him get out of a game far more dangerous than bridge. Maugham is being blackmailed—perhaps because of his unorthodox lifestyle, or perhaps because, once upon a time, Maugham worked for the British Secret Service...
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Creators
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Series
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Publisher
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Release date
March 29, 2016 -
Formats
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OverDrive Listen audiobook
- ISBN: 9780399566455
- File size: 296380 KB
- Duration: 10:17:27
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Languages
- English
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Reviews
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Narrator John Lee and author Philip Kerr's German cop, Bernie Gunther, have been together for a while now, but familiarity hasn't dimmed their affinity for each other. In Lee's well-pitched narration of the eleventh book in the series, Gunther is as wry, jaded, and curiously hopeful as ever. We find him in 1956, lying low as a hotel clerk on the Riviera. Recruited to play bridge with Somerset Maugham, he finds himself helping the author outwit a blackmailer whom Gunther himself knows from the bad old days in Nazi Germany. Lee's telling interpretations of oily ex-Nazis, local rich folk, the elderly Maugham and his un-closeted gay set, and Gunther's love interests help color Kerr's undecorated writing and add to the book's undisputed pleasures. A.C.S. © AudioFile 2016, Portland, Maine -
January 25, 2016
Set in 1956 on the French Riviera, Kerr’s assured 11th Bernie Gunther novel (after 2015’s The Lady from Zagreb) opens on a dark note, with Bernie’s confessing to a failed suicide attempt after his wife abandoned him. Bored by his current job as a hotel concierge, Bernie is brought back into action by bestselling writer and former spy Somerset Maugham, who lives in a nearby villa. Maugham, who’s gay at a time when that was still a criminal offense in Britain, needs Bernie’s help in dealing with a blackmailer who’s threatening to publish a compromising photograph. Meanwhile, an attractive American journalist keen on writing Maugham’s biography turns to Bernie for assistance in gaining access to him. The plot takes a surprising turn, but most compelling are the occasional flashbacks in which Kerr’s hero tries to do the right thing while serving as a cop under the Nazi regime. Author tour. Agent: Caradoc King, A.P. Watt (U.K.).
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