Bernie Gunther had his first brush with evil as a policeman in 1930s Berlin and came to know it intimately as a private eye under the Nazis when each case drew him deeper into the enormities of the regime. Now the war is over and Gunther is in Vienna trying to clear an old friend of the murder of an American officer. Amid decaying imperial splendour he traces sprials of depravity that lead him to a former head of the Gestapo. Gripping frightening and pungently atmospheric A German Requiem demonstrates Philip Kerr's power to take his readers hostage.