Metropolis. A Bernie Gunther Novel Book 14

In the night streets, political gangs wander, looking for fights. Daylight reveals a beleaguered populace barely recovering from the postwar inflation, often jobless, reeling from the reparations imposed by the victors. At central police HQ, the Murder Commission has its hands full. A killer is on the loose and though he scatters many clues, each is a dead end. It`s almost as if he is taunting the cops. Meanwhile, the press is having a field day.This is what Bernie Gunther finds on his first day with the Murder Commisson. He`s been taken on beacuse the people at the top have noticed him--they think he has the makings of a first-rate detective. But not just yet. Right now, he has to listen and learn.Metropolis, completed just before Philip Kerr`s untimely death, is the capstone of a fourteen-book journey through the life of Kerr`s signature character, Bernhard Genther, a sardonic and wisecracking homicide detective caught up in an increasingly Nazified Berlin police department. In many ways, it is Bernie`s origin story and, as Kerr`s last novel, it is also, alas, his end.Metropolis is also a tour of a city in chaos: of its seedy sideshows and sex clubs, of the underground gangs that run its rackets, and its bewildered citizens-the lost, the homeless, the abandoned. It is Berlin as it edges toward the new world order that Hitler will soo usher in. And Bernie? He`s a quick study and he`s learning a lot. Including, to his chagrin, that when push comes to shove, he isn`t much better than the gangsters in doing whatever her must to get what he wants.