OPINION:
PRUSSIAN BLUE: A BERNIE GUNTHER NOVEL
By Philip Kerr
Marian Wood Books/Putnam, $27, 544 pages
The darkest corridors of power are the home ground of Philip Kerr, an author who has brought renewed life to the monsters of the Nazi era.
In the sardonic hands of his cop character Bernie Gunther, Mr. Kerr restores Hitler’s Frankensteins and then some in the bizarre setting of Berchtesgarten, the once idyllic mountain home of the fuehrer,
“Prussian Blue” is a double barreled volume that tracks the homicide detective’s trail from France in the 1950s back to a Germany preparing for war in the 1930s. Still pursued by his old enemies of the Reich, and ordered to commit murder, Bernie, the reluctant former SS officer, narrowly escapes hanging and has to go forward with killing to save himself. The book swings around in its plot to take Bernie back to his days working for Martin Bormann, the prominent Nazi official who was Hitler’s private secretary and Reinhard Heydrich, who was known as the butcher of Czechoslovakia. But the core of the plot focuses on how the intrepid cop tries to solve a murder committed more or less on the doorstep of Hitler, or the Leader as he is known by his most faithful.
Once a cop, Bernie is always a cop, and he chases down the less evil just as ferociously as the real evil. And the beauty of Philip Kerr’s more than 30 books (including 11 Bernie Gunther novels), is that they are more than garden variety thrillers. Capturing mood and misdeeds in historical context along with great flair, they recapture and represent the singular evil that simmered and unfortunately thrived during the second world war. They might be said to represent the living memory of the danger of forgetting or ignoring the horrors that preoccupied the years of Nazi conflict. And “Prussian Blue” is no exception. Mr. Kerr has a real talent for offering up the awful in characterization in a manner that makes the monsters of the Reich almost recognizably human. It is gripping and persuasive and it is terrifying.
Not that Bernie himself doesn’t suffer for his lifestyle. He is all too aware of what he is watching, and there is no romance in this latest chronicle unless you count his fondness for a good-looking woman who is incredibly devoted to Hitler. There is only one episode in the book when Bernie appears to be genuinely shocked by the discovery of how much of a murderer the fuehrer really is. And he never forgets the evidence of that crime.
There is significance in an exchange he has with Heydrich, who in hiring the Berlin cop he knows is not a Nazi observes to a group of followers hanging onto his every word, “Gentlemen, I must confess that there are times when I do believe in a providence that protects idiots, children, drunkards and Bernhard Gunther But I can always use a useful man and he’s nothing if not that. In fact I think his greatest virtue is his usefulness.”
Encouraged by Heydrich to speak freely Kripo chief Arthur Nebe, one of the assembled, observes, “I think that sometimes a harmful truth is better than a useful life.”
Heydrich laughs. “You’re right, Arthur, we are the directors of providence … ” And returning his attention to Bernie he says, “Do smoke Gunther, please; I insist. I like to encourage a man’s vices. Especially yours. I have a feeling that one day they might be even more useful than your virtues. In fact. I’m sure of it. Turning you into my stooge is going to be one of my long-term projects.”
Of course the calculating Nazi doesn’t succeed because Bernie is the ultimate survivor, a man who shudders at his own thoughts and memories and goes on with his work. Readers should be grateful that among the many writers of thrillers, there are still a few who can recall the worst of reality. Nobody can accuse Mr. Kerr of not doing his homework and his research. Long live Bernie.
• Muriel Dobbin is a former White House and national political reporter for McClatchy newspapers and the Baltimore Sun.
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