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The Pale Criminal

Bernie Gunther Thriller 2

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The Pale Criminal

By: Philip Kerr
Narrated by: Jonathan Keeble
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'One of the greatest anti-heroes ever written' LEE CHILD

A series of horrific ritual murders leads Bernie Gunther to an occult conspiracy at the very heart of the Nazi Party - hard-boiled noir thriller for fans of Raymond Chandler and John le Carré

Five German schoolgirls are missing. Four have been found dead. But unlike the undesirables who make up the majority of dead and missing people in Hitler's Berlin, these girls were blonde and blue-eyed - the Aryan flower of German maidenhood - and their gruesome deaths recall ritual killings.

Busy with a blackmail case, Bernie is reluctant when he is asked to rejoin the Berlin police in order to track down the murderer. But when the person doing the asking is none other than head of the SD, Reinhard Heydrich, it's not exactly a request he can turn down. As Bernie gets closer to the truth, he realises that at the heart of this case is much more than one lone madman - in fact, there is a conspiracy at work more chilling than he could ever have imagined.

(P) 2021 Quercus Editions Limited©2016 Thynker Limited Crime Espionage Historical International Mystery & Crime Modern Detectives Mystery Private Investigators Spies & Politics Thriller & Suspense Fiction Murder
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excellent story framed by unsettling historical context and a timely reminder of Nazi Germany and the genesis of World War 2. highly recommended warning from history

Great story

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the atmosphere of Berlin in the 1930s as well as the reading performance are fantastic

another brilliantly well read book

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these books are a tough listen, setting a series of detective stories in nazi germany is aways gonna be tough, if gritty realisu
realisem isn't your thing then these books aren't for you, but these books are utterly compelling, it's like rabbit in the caught in the lights of an oncoming vehicle feeling reading these books, it's an object lesson in how a whole nation can be captivated by basically a cult and lead down a path of horror that affects the whole world, and seeing through the underbelly of that world, by a man who is disgusted by it, the first two books have been fascinating but the main character is a man of his time, he may well be disgusted with the political situation but bernie gunther is not politically correct, the misogyny and the objectification of women in the stories I've listened to are at times a little overplayed, but this is nazi germany I guess, I would recommend these books but with a warning, although fascinating, insightful, and even funny at times, they are also gritty, dark and unrelentingly verbally and physically violent, but hey they're detective stories set in a terrible time what would you expect

tough listen

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A gripping detective story in the vein of the tough P.I.s like Hammer or Marlowe. However being set in pre-war Germany, this unusual backdrop, with the presence of such well-know Nazi figures, sets the story apart from the normal detective thrillers. and gives it an air of reality. This is the second Bernie Gunther novel, and is possibly even more enjoyable than the first. Here Bernie is given no option but to return to working as a policeman to solve the murders of young girls in Berlin, but is still up to all his old tricks as a private detective, and as full of irreverence as usual, even against the Nazi leadership.

Gripping story

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The fact that the narrator, being male, also voiced female characters. This did not work very well in my opinion

The mix between fiction and historical non-fiction

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