Another Bernie Gunther mystery, my fourth, set this time in 1949, post WWII Germany, as Bernie tries to recreate himself in a ravaged Germany, while trying to live down his past as Germany soldier. It's a complicated story, one I will only partly try to summarize. Bernie is hired to find a woman's husband who has disappeared. This leads Bernie into a web of Nazi intrigue as he learns about the underground which finds ways to allow Nazi war criminals to escape to South America. In this case, Bernie is taken advantage of by two Nazis, who use him as bait, sending him to Austria with a false passport to find the missing husband. Bernie discovers that the passport he's carrying is really that of a Nazi war criminal and when he goes to the apartment of the man he seeks, he finds he has been murdered, and Bernie is blamed for this. He then makes contact with the underground; he has no choice as he's carrying a Nazi passport, ends up at a catholic monastery, where the priests are involved in helping Nazis to escape to Argentina. Bernie stays there for a few months, waiting for his papers but manages, in a day. to wreak revenge on the three men who set him up earlier in the novel by putting malaria carrying mosquitoes in their suit cases (I won't go in to why there are malaria carrying mosquitoes in Germany). Eventually, he gets his pass port and sails to Argentina with two other Nazis, one called Adolph Eichmann. And the novel ends...to be continued no doubt.
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