A German Requiem (novel)
First edition
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| Author | Philip Kerr |
|---|---|
| Country | United Kingdom |
| Language | English |
| Series | Berlin Noir |
| Genre | Crime, Detective, Historical mystery |
| Published | 1991 (Viking Press, London) |
| Media type | Print (Hardback and Paperback) |
| ISBN | |
| OCLC | 23903789 |
| 823/.914 20 | |
| LC Class | PR6061.E784 G47 1991 |
| Preceded by | The Pale Criminal |
A German Requiem is a historical detective novel and the last in the Berlin Noir trilogy of Bernhard Günther novels written by Philip Kerr.
After spending the latter part of the war in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp, 1947 sees Bernhard Günther now married to a wife who is trading sex with U.S. Army officers for scarce goods. Berlin and Vienna were captured by the Red Army, so Germans, former Nazis, Allied occupiers and Günther have the Russians to contend with. An old colleague from Günther's days in Berlin, a dirty cop, war criminal, and smuggler named Emil Becker, has been accused and jailed in Vienna for the killing of an American officer called Linden. A high-ranking MVD officer named Poroshin, who claims to be a friend of Becker, tries to recruit Günther to investigate the case and get Becker exonerated in exchange for a large fee. According to Poroshin, after acting as a secret Vienna-Berlin courier for a certain König, Becker was framed for the murder of Linden, who Becker had met through König.
Günther takes a train to Vienna and visits Becker in jail, where he learns that Becker's henchmen had been killed trying to find König and his girlfriend Lotte Hartmann at Becker's request. Günther starts his investigation in Vienna, by attending Linden's funeral, where he is accosted by Roy Shields, an American MP. At approximately the same time, Günther rescues a recent acquaintance, Veronika, a local prostitute he met as part of the investigation, from rape by two Russian soldiers. As part of the intervention, Günther gets knocked down and is himself rescued in extremis by John Belinsky, a man bearing identification associating him with the American Counter-Intelligence Corps (CIC) that had been covertly tailing him. They fraternize, Belinsky admits to also being investigating the murder of Linden, and they agree to collaborate.
When Günther discovers the whereabouts of Lotte Hartman, he teams up with Belinsky to organize a scheme in which Günther and Lotte would be somehow about be arrested and jailed by the Russians, so that Günther could ingratiate himself with her by obtaining her freedom. The scheme works and Günther is eventually approached by König, who wants to repay him from springing Lotte. After they meet, König is impressed by Günther's past credentials and eventually, recruits him in a secret organization of former Nazis called the "Org", which Günther accepts to infiltrate with the knowledge of Belinsky. Günther soon finds out that Becker was also in the Org, for which he was acting as a double agent for his friend Poroshin.
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