The One from the Other (Bernard Gunther, #4)

by Philip Kerr

He was in his mid-forties, with a couple of boulders for shoulders and a weathered sort of face like something carved on a flying buttress.

Cairo was the diamond stud on the handle of the fan of the Nile delta. That was what my Baedeker said, anyway. To me it looked like something much less precious—more like the teat under a cow’s belly that fed a representative of every tribe in Africa, of which continent it was the largest city.

I put it down to the new suit I had bought at Oberpollinger. It fit me like a glove. Kaufmann’s suit was better. It fit him like a suit.

A brass plaque on one of the obelisk-shaped gateposts said it was a villa, but probably only because they were a little shy about using a word like “palace.”

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.

He stayed with me as far as the library, then wheeled around silently and set off for home again b...

The paintings on exhibition were similarly modern-looking, which is to say they were as easy on the eye as a sharp stick.

If I want a picture to speak to me, I’ll go watch Maureen O’Sullivan in a Tarzan movie.

please.” He bowed his head politely. “What I mean is, he won’t feel

The vault was modest by the standard of an Egyptian pharaoh.

I came to believe human beings were capable of an unlimited degree of inhumanity. Perhaps that—our very inhumanity—is what makes us human most of all.