Having not read a thriller for a while, I was pleasantly
surprised by Philip Kerr’s 2010 cold war tale, Field Grey. The latest in the Bernie Gunther series, the
novel’s meandering narrative sees Bernie dragged back to Germany as a pawn in a
CIA plot to capture a leading Stasi agent, Erich Mielke.
The slow-burning plot, casting a cynical eye over Americans,
Russians, Frenchmen and Germans alike, is perhaps not the novel’s
strength. Told largely in flashback as
Bernie recounts his story to various captors, the first 450 pages cover a lot
of ground without ever catching fire.
It is thus fortunate that the first-person persona Kerr
creates in Gunther is so wonderful.
Bernie Gunther veers from a tortured soul to a hyper-self-conscious
James Bond, and ensures that even the most pedestrian passages of plot flow
smoothly. The only thing Bernie loves
more than beautiful women is a one-liner, and obviously both simultaneously is
ideal: “You aren’t looking for a policeman.
You’re looking for a man who’s eager to please and looking for
advancement in the communist party... The last time I was looking for
advancement in a party a pretty girl slapped my face.”
