Rating: 4/5
Review:
A good read
I realise that this is tantamount to sacrilege, but I didn’t get on
very well with the early Bernie Gunther books and haven’t read one
for some time. I thought I’d try Greeks Bearing Gifts to see
whether the later books suited me better and was pleasantly surprised
to enjoy it.
It is 1957 and
Bernie (under an assumed name) is eventually helped into a job as an
insurance investigator, which he proves to be very good at. He is
sent to Greece to look into the apparently accidental sinking of a
boat and becomes embroiled in a plot involving German war criminals,
gold plundered from the Jews murdered in Greece and so on. It’s a
complicated, twisty plot, but a good one, which is rich in Kerr’s
research into the subject and which makes for an involving read.
I have to say that
the book is too long and Kerr is very keen to show off his research
in lengthy speeches by various characters which, while accurate,
don’t really ring true as dialogue. However, the relentless
hard-boiled wisecracking of the earlier books is largely absent and
the gratuitous misogyny is dialled down to the level of sexism which
might be expected from someone like Bernie in 1957, both of which
were a considerable relief to me.
So, for me this is a
good read rather than a brilliant one, but well worth a look; there’s
plenty to like and to think about here.
(My thanks to
Quercus for an ARC via NetGalley.)
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