A MAN WITHOUT BREATH: PHILIP KERR

Another Bernie Gunther novel, Phillip Kerr's eleventh in a series.  This time it's 1943 and Bernie is working in the war crimes division. There's a rumor of mass graves in Smolenski, repudiated to be 4000 Polish officers.  After a wolf unearths human remains, it's fairly clear that the Russians were responsible and if proved, it could be a marvelous propaganda victory for the Nazis, an embarrassment at the least for the Russians.  And guess who is sent to discover the truth of the rumors, our favorite Berlin sleuth, Bernie Gunther.

Joseph Goebbels, chief of Nazi propaganda, sees the value of this as, ironically, thousands of Jews are being put to death at various death camps. In Bernie, he sees the perfect detective, independent, a bit of a maverick who previously has worked for Reinhold Heydrich, the Butcher of Czechoslovakia.

The fun of these novels is watching Bernie walk a narrow line between his conscience, being a good cop and yet being smart enough to rarely challenge the Nazis. His empathy for Jews, too, in almost all the novels sets him apart from the rest of his colleagues.  Bernie comes close to being hung but at is saved by a Prussian colonel who also manages to survive his efforts to assassinate Hitler, an example of Kerr using a historical figure in his novels.  Because Bernie survives,  Kerr can write the twelfth novel in the series called PRUSSIAN BLUE.