Philipp Kerr: Greeks bearing gifts (Bernie Gunter thriller No 13), Quercus / Hachette UK, 9781784296537, trade paperback,

One of my former bosses at Penguin was a great Philipp Kerr fan, he had urged me to read them which I never did despite all the excellent reviews about Bernie Gunter, his German anti-hero. When I read in the paper of Philip Kerr’s untimely and sudden death, I decided to honor him by reading his last book “Greeks bearing gifts” which is not set in the Thirties and Forties during the Nazi years in Germany but placed in Greece in 1957.

Bernie Gunther is now called Christoph Ganz to conceal his true identity and has landed himself a job as an insurance adjuster in Munich.  His work as a former unorthodox cop comes in handy when he is sent to Greece to investigate the loss of a ship, the “Doris”, his company Munich RE has insured.  The claimant and owner of the ship is an unfriendly character Gunther dislikes immediately. When he learns that the ships was originally owned by Greek Jews from Salonika who had their possessions confiscated by the German Nazis before being sent to their death and the current mission of the ship had been to investigate sunken ancient gold treasures, Bernie’s instincts start raising red flags. He decides to pay the claimant an unannounced second visit only to find him murdered with a shot through both eyes.  Unlucky for Bernie, the Greek police lie in wait arresting him for murder. He persuades the Greek detective in charge to make uses of his old contacts and knowledge of former Nazi officials who had committed atrocities enriching themselves during their occupation of Greece to bring them to a proper trial in Greece. The beginning of a great plot with many twists and turns.....

I learned a great deal about the German occupation of Greece in this book, the crimes committed by the Nazis and the background of some prominent German government officials after the war and why so few were ever brought to trial.  The background of several characters in the book is factual; Kerr lists what actually became of them after the war in his afterword.  The German edition has not been announced yet, his former books in the series have been translated.