I can remember seeing the name Phillip Kerr a lot in the Nineties, he wrote these technological thrillers which amassed a great deal of publicity, even if they didn’t seem to get huge readership. Well, it seems that Mr Kerr has dropped the technological, and is now writing thrillers set in the past – more specifically, post-war Germany.

Setting a detective story in Germany after the war is actually a really good idea, as there are lots of potential clients with great secrets which can then become huge conspiracies. Even a simple missing person’s case can really mean something in the world. (In this novel, the detective also goes to Vienna – bringing to mind the city streets Harry Lime once roamed around.) Earlier books in the series appear to be set before the war, when all of the above was true and things may have been even more dangerous. I might just seek them out.

Bernie Gunther is the name of the detective, and he is your rumpled – yet seemingly irresistible to the ladies – gumshoe, with a chequered past. He was never a Nazi himself, but there are things in his history he is less than proud of. He’s pitched somewhere between Phillip Marlowe and Mike Hammer: like both those men he is no respecter of authority; but he takes the code of vengeance from Hammer and the witty one-liners from Marlowe. (Although the latter can take a little getting used to, a sentence like: “It took me a whole minute to climb the steps to the front door, where a fellow dressed to go cheek-to-cheek with Ginger Rogers was waiting to take my hat and act as my scout across the marble plains that lay ahead.” seems somewhat more incongruous in dreary bomb-struck Munich than in glamorous California.)

It’s a pleasingly convoluted mystery and an entertaining read, even if it does finish with a whimper when it should end with a bang.