Greeks Bearing Gifts is the 13th, sadly penultimate, Bernie Gunther novel from Philip Kerr. Released 3rd April 2018 by Marion Wood books/Putnam, it's a substantial 522 pages and available in all formats (hardback, paperback, audio, ebook, audioCD, etc). Mr. Kerr had a career that spanned decades. He was a truly gifted artist and writer of thrillers which were written around some historical events and people. The stories are so skillfully written around the actual events that it's difficult to separate the fact from fiction.

This book is full of amazing imagery and so deftly drawn that I found myself re-reading passages after I had finished, just to savor the expertise and craftsmanship of Kerr's writing. This is an amazingly well crafted book.

I really enjoy Bernie Gunther's honesty and intelligence when the world around him and so many of the people he has to deal with are dishonest and cruel. He's just trying to get by as a morgue attendant in Munich after the war when he's recognized from his former life and forced to be complicit in a planned robbery. The ways he manages to extricate himself are as varied as they are impressive.

Wonderfully written, top shelf cold-war thriller. Truly a classic series and this is a worthy entry. I'm just sad that there aren't going to be more of them after the last one (Metropolis) later this year.

Five stars.

Published by Marian Wood Books/Putnam on April 3, 2018

Having returned to Germany at the end of Prussian Blue, Bernie Gunther is now Christof Ganz, a hospital mortuary attendant. He washes the dead, a fitting job for a man whose life has spent his life surrounded by death. A second job as a pallbearer suits him just as well. But being near Munich, it’s only a matter of time before a cop recognizes him as an ex-cop.

The cop spends his off-duty hours working as a private detective. The founder of the All-German People’s Party (GVP) has hired the cop to determine whether the GVP’s new donor is still a Nazi. The cop is planning a double-cross and threatens to expose Gunther if Gunther doesn’t help him carry out his plan.

By the time that story concludes, Gunther has a new job as an insurance adjuster. His boss send him to Athens, where a claim has been made for a ship that was lost in a fire at sea. The ill-tempered German owner of the ship is a bit mysterious, in part because he carries a gun wherever he goes, in part because he’s refusing to make a claim for artifacts he recovered on a dive that he says were lost when the ship sank.

One murder later, Gunther finds himself chasing a Nazi war criminal named Alois Brunner who has adopted a new identity and whose connection to the ship owner is not immediately clear. Gunther also needs the help of a German scapegoat who is sitting in a Greek prison, the only German the Greeks have been able to find who might have some connection to the Nazi occupation, so they want to throw the book at him. Gunther hopes the man can lead him to a bigger fish and thus appease the Greek authorities he’s helping so they don’t hang him for the murder, notwithstanding their knowledge that he didn’t commit it. Gunther also needs to help a Mossad agent from Israel or face the prospect of catching a bullet in the back.

Greeks Bearing Gifts features the moral conundrums that make Bernie Gunther novels so worthwhile. Is it morally acceptable to betray a casual friend if the friend enriched himself at the expense of Holocaust victims? Is it morally acceptable to enrich yourself at the expense of Holocaust victims who are going to die anyway? Is it morally acceptable to withhold information about marital status from a woman who is interested in you if you fear that the woman plans to shoot you after she seduces you? Bernie is far from perfect, but his life is instructive as he struggles toward morally sound answers to those questions and others.

The plot of Greek Bearing Gifts has elements of a whodunit and a police procedural, but it isn’t either of those. Bernie manages to puzzle out all the connections between the sunken ship and the dead bodies, but as is usually the case, the real puzzle is not whether Bernie will get the girl (although he has a chance to get one), but whether he will still be alive at the end of the story. The plot ultimately turns on complex international relations after World War II, but the story works because of the morally complex life of Bernie Gunther.

It seems like each new Gunther novel shifts the direction of Gunther’s life, and this one is no exception. I’m not sure I will like the new direction Gunther is taking (I would hate to see him freed from the moral quandaries that define him), but we’ll see. While not as suspenseful as some Gunther novels, Greeks Bearing Gifts pushes all the morally ambiguous buttons that fans of the series have come to expect.

RECOMMENDED

The penultimate Bernie Gunther novel has Bernie in a dead-end job. Literally. He is back in Germany in 1957, not in his beloved Berlin but in Munich, where he has a job in a hospital morgue. He is passing himself off as Christof Ganz but this does not stop a Munich cop from recognizing him from his days as a detective in Berlin. He blackmails Bernie into helping him with a robbery but when the caper fails and the intended victim, an important German politician with a checkered past, gratefully offers to get Bernie a better job in an insurance company as a claims adjuster. This is right up Bernie’s alley and when he uses his detective skills to save the company a bundle of money on a faulty claim, his bosses up his salary, give him a company car, and offer him a “holiday” in Greece where he can relax after looking into an accident involving a sunken yacht insured by the company.

But, of course, nothing is for free in Bernie’s life. Almost as soon as he starts to investigate the story of the sunken yacht he becomes embroiled in yet more murders which lead back to very familiar territory, Nazis committing crimes against humanity. This time it is Greece during WW2. In a plot worthy of the mythological labyrinth designed by Daedalus, Bernie has to clear himself of a murder charge in order to reclaim his passport while he is figuring out if the yacht’s owner was trying to smuggle Greek antiquities or Jewish gold out of the country. And it doesn’t help that the murdered guy is Bernie’s client the yacht owner. And all the while Bernie smells a rat, like he is being manipulated by people who have more than his self-interest at heart.

This novel has the usual Bernie trappings. There are interesting side characters as well as the obligatory beautiful woman who appears to fall for Bernie. However, with the wisdom of age and past experience Bernice knows this affair will go nowhere. He is too old for her and, frankly, too tired to play the amorous game. As far as the murders are concerned. Bernie is dogged in his pursuit of the truth and guilt-ridden by his role in the Nazi regime. Still, Bernie seems to have had a shift in his self-worth and is beginning to believe that even he is capable of redemption if he can do something significant to atone for his participation, even unwillingly, in the German atrocities.

There are a few hints about the final novel in the series which comes out next year. Bernie has a curious meeting with a mysterious woman who is part of Ha’ Mossad. Could Bernie help with the capture of the most important Nazi still free? After all, Bernie does know Albert Eichmann…….

Philip Kerr is greatly missed.

This is one of the best books I have read all year. I am glad I found a new author to read, he is sufficiently sarcastic and world weary to make an interesting character to read about.

Poor Bernie Samson keeps getting put in the lion’s den by figures from the past when all he wants to do is hide out in a quiet life. Ambitions are low for him as we encounter him in 1957 Munich working as a hospital morgue attendant and living under an assumed identity. For those who might read this without earlier volumes on his experiences as a criminal investigator in Berlin during the war, Kerr slips in enough backstory to put the new reader into the picture. His talent in solving murders in pre-war Germany kept him valued in this civilian role despite the Nazis rise to dominance. Unfortunately for him, the integration of the Berlin PD with the SD security forces brings him under the power a succession of infamous higher ups (Goebbels, Heydrich, and Nebe) who seek to take advantage of his skills to further their lucrative corruption schemes, personal vendettas, or cover-ups of horrific policies. The pattern continues into the Cold War period, such as in the prior volume set in France where the puppetmaster he must outwit is his old nemesis, Mielke, then head of the Stasi security branch of East Germany (another real person).

Here his cover in hiding from the Stasi is threatened by being recognized by a former associate from his SD/police days, Merton, now a legal counselor in the government of Prime Minister Adenauer. Merton helps him get a job as a claims adjuster for a large insurance company, which usefully taps his investigative capacities and ability to sniff out lies and scams. Success leads him to eventually get assigned a case of the total loss of an insured yacht in Greece though a fire and sinking. The owner making the claim turns out to be a German tied to the former Nazi regime, supposedly on a diving mission to salvage artefacts from Ancient Greece which is sanctioned personally by the Interior Minister. As Bernie pursues his investigation with a local Greek operations employee, the boat sinking does not appear to have been an accident. Incidents of violence and murder among or linked to his suspects lead him to detect a mysterious involvement of ex-Nazis in the Adenauer government. All I can say about the fiendish scheme he is up against is that it relates to Nazi gold appropriated from Greek Jews, to adverse consequences of Adenauer’s adoption of amnesty or accommodation to former Nazis, and to the ambitions of Greece to join the EEC with West Germany and France, a precursor to the EU and ticket to an economic bonanza.

Like the Woody Allen character Zellig, Bernie turns up at events of key historical significance, such as at turning points in the war or events linked to atrocities or massive subterfuge in the conquered territories (Ukraine, Czechoslovakia, etc). He always has to do a nimble dance to survive and often achieves of some kind of alternative justice for his enemies along the way. I love how he keeps his spirits up with his cynical humor, wincing only now and then with his Chandleresque diatribe. In this one, his humor centers on mythological references to the gods and heroes of the Ancient Greeks. Much of this dialogue is with a female lawyer he befriends and engages in the case, Elli, which includes a lot of clever, lustful flirting traditional to noir tales (I think Kerr wants you to wince a bit; Bernie is otherwise lonely and no sexual predator). In fact, she is feels like a Trojan Horse to him, a gift he is suspicious of for a long time. And it turns out both she and a police lieutenant Levantis (middle name Patroclus) would love to see Bernie’s work lead to justice for those responsible for the rounding up and shipping out for the Final Solution roughly 70,000 of Greek Jews from the Salonika regions, where they had a large thriving community over the centuries since Spain kicked them out in 1492. The fact that no war criminal was ever convicted after the war for Nazi atrocities in Greece or by their Italian Fascist proxies was a mystery I appreciated learning about in this tale. Kerr’s take on it in his bold plotting felt brilliant. I also loved the way he slipped a cool female Nazi hunter from the Israeli Mossad into the tale.

Because I have been reading Homer recently, I appreciated some of the play with his epic themes. The pursuit of Nazi gold from the Jews of Salonika is suggested as but one step beyond the incidental treachery, pillaging, and enslavement perpetrated by Odysseus on his long way back home. In this reflection, the trickster hero’s lies employed by seeming necessity for his survival and goals becomes such a pattern for him, he can't help lying to Penelope when he gets home. In his allusions, the German people usually have to bend their stories about what they did during the war. He engages us to think in such ways at the beginning of his tale:

<i>The collection of stories that make us who we are only looks exaggerated or fictitious until we find ourselves living on its stained and dog-eared pages. The Greeks have a word for this, of course: “mythology.” Mythology explains everything, from natural phenomena to what happens when you die and head downstairs, or when, unwisely, you steal a box of matches from Zeus. As it happens Greeks have a lot to do with this story. Perhaps with every story, when you stop to think about it. After all, it was a Greek called Homer who invented modern storytelling, in between losing his sight and probably not existing at all.</i>

Alas, the Bernie Gunther series is at an end. Philip Kerr died in march, leaving one other Gunther manuscript, a prequel to his pre-war days to be published in 2019, “Metropolis”. I’ve really enjoyed 5 of his 13 Gunther novels read far, so I have a lot more to mine, not to mention 15 other unread thrillers of his set in different times and places. This British author is also appreciated for his children’s books written under the name P.B. Kerr. I am so grateful for his gift to me and fellow fans.,

This book was provided for review by the publisher through the Netgalley program.

A lovely, sad Bernie Gunther story with Bernie just trying to lead a normal life as as insurance adjuster when he is sent to Greece to settle a claim. But of course old Nazies, murder and a beautiful woman all show up. One interesting character a female Mossad agent requesting Bernie's help makes an appearance which hints at the direction that the last book might take. All told another great book from the late Phillip Kerr, he will be missed.

The Bernie Gunther books have been a favorite of mine for a long time. It was always fascinating how Philip Kerr was able to weave in actual historic events and create such a gripping mystery. I was sad to hear of his recent passing.

The 13th novel in the Bernie Gunther saga does not disappoint. We get quintessential Bernie. Hard living, fast talking, cynical Bernie Gunther. This time we find our sullen hero, under a new assumed name, working as an insurance adjuster. His penchant for sniffing out lies and fraudulent claims eventually lands him in Greece to inspect a recent claim on a sunken ship. As can be expected, he is forced to use his background as a detective to help solve a murder and save his own skin.

Philip Kerr expertly creates a mystery that had so many twits and turns, I found it difficult to put this down. I found it refreshing that the story takes place during the "present" and we did not have any flashbacks as in previous installments. Even with our hero getting older, I found it believable that Bernie was able to solve this crime in typical Bernie fashion. I love the way Kerr writes, it reminds me of old Hollywood and I love it. If you love the Bernie Gunther mysteries you will not be disappointed. Thanks to NetGalley for providing and ARC for review.

We're going to miss Philip Kerr. This series has had its ups and downs and I do think it helps tremendously to have read the earlier books to appreciate this latest. Bernie has had a run of rotten luck but he thinks things will turn around when he takes a job as an insurance investigator. Regrettably, it might be 1957 but the echoes of WWII linger in Greece as much as as in the rest of Europe so when a corpse turns up, well there's a cat and mouse game afoot. Lt. Leventis is a nicely written character who is as determined as Bernie to find out who is at fault. This is a complex novel, with twists turns and a lot of history, some of which was unfamiliar to me. Thanks to Netgalley for the ARC. This is a very good read.

And yet, another gem! I never weary following the life of Bernie Gunther ... this is the thirteenth adventure of ex-Kripo cop and sometime private eye ... he has walked a tightrope to survive in Nazi Germany and maintain his integrity without being killed by these heinous monsters ... such as his previous master, General Reinhard Heydrich.
Philip Kerr continues to amaze with his seamless intertwining of fact and fiction in these historical thrillers. Bernie is attempting to start a new life in 1956 Munich under the assumed name "Christof Ganz" to avoid capture by the East German Stasi's ("... every bit as heinous as the Gestapo.." ) He works the graveyard shift as a mortuary attendant .... washing corpses and cleaning up shit ... and,
by day a professional pallbearer, decked out in tails and top hat.
Ultimately he is recognized by local criminal inspector Schramma and is virtually black-mailed into helping this crooked cop pull off a robbery of $10.000 destined for Dr Max Merten. Schramma kills several high ranking officials and implicates Bernie. The plot thickens as Max Merten in gratitude for retrieving the money, finds him a new job as a "claims adjuster" for Munich RE .
Bernie travels to Athens, Greece to investigate the authenticity of a large maritime claim by Siegfried Witzel ... a known former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. A
complicated and multifaceted tale unfolds implicating multiple Nazi's and their past crimes. Woven into the fabric of the story are the 60,000 Jews from Thessalonika that were "resettled" to the Auschwitz death camp (with perhaps only 2,000 surviving) .... certainly creating motive for vengeance
Local cop, Lieutenant Leventis recruits Bernie to investigate local murders that have the same homicidal signature that he previously attached to an untouchable Nazi officer from the past .... perhaps implicating SD officer Alois Brunner.
Bernie finds himself in 1956 Greece, where the locals find it difficult if not impossible to distinguish any German from a Nazi. This complicates Bernie's endeavors to fulfill his sense of pride and redemption and bring these loathsome creatures to justice.
As I was finishing this marvelous novel I learned of the premature death of Philip Kerr. The loss of his narrative skills and person will be missed by friends, family and fans. Thanks to Netgalley and Putnam Books for providing this marvelous uncorrected proof in exchange for an honest review.
#Netgalley #PutnamBooks

At the start of the 13th book in the Bernie Gunther series, it’s 1957 and Bernie is living in Munich under the false name Christoph Ganz. He’s working as a mortuary assistant until an acquaintance gets him a job as an insurance adjuster at the prominent company Munich RE. That’s a big step up in pay, but whenever anything good happens to Bernie, it inevitably turns out to come at a price.

After impressing his superiors at Munich RE, Bernie is sent to Greece to check out a claim relating to the supposedly accidental sinking of a small ship called the Doris. Bernie has a preliminary interview with Siegfried Witzel, the German claimant who says he was on an expedition looking for ancient artifacts, and is not impressed. And boy, is Bernie right to be dubious. From here on out, Bernie is caught up in a dangerous mystery involving the Nazis’ horrific actions in Greece during the war, and the contemporary machinations of the German government under Konrad Adenauer, certain parties in the Greek government, and even the Mossad.

The Bernie Gunther novels always illuminate real historical events, and Greeks Bearing Gifts is a real learning experience about the role of the Germans in Greece during the war, and its fallout postwar. This fallout affects German/Greek relations to this day.

Unlike a lot of Bernie Gunther novels, this one is not a dual narrative, with one contemporary thread and another one taking place before or during the war. This one all takes place in 1957. And that’s a good thing, because it’s a complicated plot that would be that much harder to follow if you also had to deal with another plot thread in a different time and place.

The complexity of the plot makes this not as exciting a read as, say, the most recent book in the series, Prussian Blue. But what this book does is to look more deeply into Bernie’s feelings about his and Germany’s responsibilities in the postwar period. It looks like this will be a continuing theme and I’m looking forward to seeing what Bernie will do to translate these feelings into action.

I have long been a fan of Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther books and Greeks Bearing Gifts does not disappoint. This time it's 1957 and Bernie is in Greece, using an alias and working as an insurance adjuster investigating a claim for a sunken ship. Readers will not be surprised to learn that Bernie can't get away from his past, either his work as a police detective in Germany before and during WWII or his personal life, which is complicated. This 13th book in the series reminds us of the horrors the Nazis inflicted on Greece and the resulting economic impacts that are still being experienced. As usual, the story is long and complex and riddled with Bernie's cynical and wry comments. The largest flaws in the novel relates to those comments, of which there are too many and to its long length. That said, it's wonderful to see Kerr continuing to maintain this series at such a high quality.