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The Other Side of Silence
Philip Kerr
Putnam & Sons, New York, 2016
978-0-399-18519-9
This is the eleventh book in the series about former Berlin detective Bernie Gunther. Gunther’s history starts before WW II, as the Nazi Party is beginning to gain power. Gunther does not like the Nazis, but tries to investigate murders without regard to politics. This eventually becomes impossible and his adventures lead him through a brief career as a private detective followed by being drafted into the German army. Germany under the Nazis is a seething pit of ambition and conspiracies, hidden crimes and hidden motives. Different factions within the Party and within the government use Gunther’s talents and his persistent wish for justice to further their own ends. Gunther is forced to work with many people that both he and history find morally repugnant.
In 1956 the war is over and Gunther is hiding on the French Riviera while working as a concierge at a luxury hotel under the name of Walter Wolf. A figure from his past appears, Harold Hennig, a former captain in German intelligence, who is also under an assumed name. The reclusive British novelist W. Somerset Maugham lives in a nearby villa with his nephew Robin Maugham and his lover Ronald Searle. Maugham is being blackmailed with a photograph that reveals him and several male friends and lovers as homosexuals. Since homosexuality was still illegal in England at the time, both he and his friends, many in prominent positions have a great deal to lose if outed. He wants Gunther to serve as a go between in the payoff to the blackmailer. But a simple blackmail turns into a complex plot involving the British intelligence agencies M-15 and M-16, the East German Stassi, which now employs Hennig, and the Soviets. The ensuing story includes Gunther’s previous history with Hennig, two incidents in which Hennig had attacked people with whom Gunther had attachments.
Although the novel is fiction, Kerr make it clear that he has based it on a great deal of fact. Maugham was indeed homosexual and did run a British spy ring in Russia just after the Winter Revolution. A number of British intelligence agents were known or suspected to be double agents for the Soviets. And most students of the history of this era are familiar with the numbers of former Nazis who were absorbed into the successor governments of Germany and of the Allies.
The Other Side of Silence is more of a spy novel than a mystery. It will probably be enjoyed best by those who are already familiar with the character, but this is true of many series books. Kerr has a gift for turning obscure bits of history into vigorous fiction.
Philip Kerr
Putnam & Sons, New York, 2016
978-0-399-18519-9
This is the eleventh book in the series about former Berlin detective Bernie Gunther. Gunther’s history starts before WW II, as the Nazi Party is beginning to gain power. Gunther does not like the Nazis, but tries to investigate murders without regard to politics. This eventually becomes impossible and his adventures lead him through a brief career as a private detective followed by being drafted into the German army. Germany under the Nazis is a seething pit of ambition and conspiracies, hidden crimes and hidden motives. Different factions within the Party and within the government use Gunther’s talents and his persistent wish for justice to further their own ends. Gunther is forced to work with many people that both he and history find morally repugnant.
In 1956 the war is over and Gunther is hiding on the French Riviera while working as a concierge at a luxury hotel under the name of Walter Wolf. A figure from his past appears, Harold Hennig, a former captain in German intelligence, who is also under an assumed name. The reclusive British novelist W. Somerset Maugham lives in a nearby villa with his nephew Robin Maugham and his lover Ronald Searle. Maugham is being blackmailed with a photograph that reveals him and several male friends and lovers as homosexuals. Since homosexuality was still illegal in England at the time, both he and his friends, many in prominent positions have a great deal to lose if outed. He wants Gunther to serve as a go between in the payoff to the blackmailer. But a simple blackmail turns into a complex plot involving the British intelligence agencies M-15 and M-16, the East German Stassi, which now employs Hennig, and the Soviets. The ensuing story includes Gunther’s previous history with Hennig, two incidents in which Hennig had attacked people with whom Gunther had attachments.
Although the novel is fiction, Kerr make it clear that he has based it on a great deal of fact. Maugham was indeed homosexual and did run a British spy ring in Russia just after the Winter Revolution. A number of British intelligence agents were known or suspected to be double agents for the Soviets. And most students of the history of this era are familiar with the numbers of former Nazis who were absorbed into the successor governments of Germany and of the Allies.
The Other Side of Silence is more of a spy novel than a mystery. It will probably be enjoyed best by those who are already familiar with the character, but this is true of many series books. Kerr has a gift for turning obscure bits of history into vigorous fiction.
