The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr
My rating: 5 of 5 stars
This is the tenth of the Bernie Gunther novels and I think it is one of the better ones. The story begins on the French Riviera in 1956 with Bernie seeing a movie starring Dalia Dresner, the lady from Zagreb. The action takes us back to 1942 and a police conference in Berlin, where Bernie is to give a talk on one of his pre-war cases. We meet Walter Schellenberger, Josef Goebbels and Bernie’s old acquaintance Artur Nebe. Bernie is informally asked to look into some irregularities concerning the sale of the villa the conference is being held in – this is the same villa used in for the Wannsee conference earlier in 1942. The sale involves several high ranking SS officers and a Swiss corporation, but before Bernie gets too far into the job, there is a murder. And that kind of wraps it up for 1942; the plot resumes in 1943 – the events of “A Man without Breath” take place in during the gap.
In 1943 Bernie is sent on a mission to Zagreb by Goebbels; basically as a favor to Dalia Dresner, a film star whom both Goebbels and Bernie are attracted to. She has a letter that she wants delivered to her father who is Croatian. Bernie’s trip through Yugoslavia is horrific, and when he returns to Berlin he is sent to Switzerland where Dresner and her husband are living. In Switzerland Bernie meets Schellenberger again, as well as Allen Dulles. To avoid spoilers, I can’t say a lot about the Swiss part of the book, but Bernie is able to put the pieces together and solve the mystery. Or mysteries. Or at least some of the mysteries.
Another well-written novel Phillip Kerr that fills in a few of the gaps in the Bernie Gunter saga. It was a very enjoyable read. The one nit I have to pick is a minor one – Marshal Mannerheim of Finland didn’t negotiate an armistice with the Soviet Union in 1943; that was in 1944.