Frank H. (perryfran) reviewed on 7/17/2022 + 1223 more book reviews

I have been reading the Bernie Gunther novels slowly over the past few years after first reading BERLIN NOIR which contains the first three in the series. A QUIET FLAME is the fifth book and it finds Bernie in Argentina in 1950 after he is accused of being a Nazi war criminal. In Buenos Aires he tries to start a new life when he is approached by a local policeman, Colonel Montalban, who know of Bernie's former life as a police detective in Berlin. He asks Bernie to investigate the murder of a teenage girl who was brutally eviscerated after being murdered. The girl was killed in a similar manner as some young women who Bernie investigated in Berlin in 1932. Montalban thinks the killer could be the same person as the killer back in Berlin. Argentina had allowed many Nazis to immigrate there after the war and the killer may be among them. When another teen goes missing, Gunther agrees to slyly question his fellow expatriates in exchange for medical treatment for thyroid cancer. Meanwhile, a young Jewish woman, Anna Yagubsky, begs Gunther to find out what happened to her missing aunt and uncle. All of this leads to some very dark findings by Gunther involving some of the most notorious Nazi war criminals including Mengele and Eichman.

The story is told from two different time periods, Argentina in 1950 and Berlin in 1932 just prior to Hitler being made Chancellor of Germany. This was really a superb post WWII thriller with Gunther being assumed by most to being an amoral racist because of his past in the SS. The novel gave a really unique and intriguing look at the Nazis and their life in Argentina under Peron's rule as well as life in Berlin at the end of the Weimar Republic in 1932. I'll be looking forward to continuing with the remaining books in this series.

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