Assignment: Munich

If you were alive and reading detective fiction in the late 1980s and early ’90s, you probably recognize the name Bernie Gunther. The captivating creation of then still-green British novelist Philip Kerr, Gunther started out (in March Violets, 1989) as a 38-year-old ex-soldier and former Berlin cop, who in 1936--during the run-up to World War II--worked the often seedy streets of Adolf Hitler’s capital as a private eye specializing in missing-persons cases, of which there were appallingly many. Tough-guy Gunther went on to star in two more novels, The Pale Criminal (1990), and German Requiem (1991), the latter of which finds the war over, Berlin in shambles, and Bernie married and seeking some solace in Vienna. But after that third book, his adventures were over. Kaput. Kerr went on to other things, writing a number of standalone crime works (such as 1993’s Dead Meat, 1999’s The Shot, and his wonderful Sir Isaac Newton sleuthing yarn, 2002’s Dark Matter). He even branched out into children’s lit, penning a series of fantastical novels under the name P.B. Kerr.

But now it seems Bernie Gunther is returning from the grave. G.P. Putnam’s Sons’ fall 2006 catalogue contains a page devoted to The One from the Other, the unexpected fourth installment of Kerr’s memorable historical P.I. series, due out in early September. Apparently, much has changed since we last checked in on our cynical German hero. As Putnam explains:

For Bernie Gunther, Berlin has become too dangerous, and he now works as a private detective in Munich. Business is slow and his funds are dwindling when a woman hires him to investigate her husband’s disappearance. No, she doesn’t want him back--he’s a war criminal. She merely wants confirmation that he is dead. It’s a simple job, but in postwar Germany, nothing is simple--nothing is what it appears to be. Accepting the case, Bernie takes on far more than he’d bargained for, and before long, he is on the run, facing enemies from every side.

At 400 pages long, it sounds like a classic Gunther thriller. The question is, though, whether author Kerr intends to stop with The One from the Other, or will be continuing the Gunther series from this point onward.

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Speaking of books to be on the watch for, Mark Coggins reported on his blog not so long ago that author Joe Gores, who in his 1975 thriller, Hammett, imagined detective-turned-novelist Dashiell Hammett returning to the mean streets of San Francisco in pursuit of a killer, is going to write a prequel to The Maltese Falcon (1930), which introduced private eye Sam Spade. In a letter to Coggins, Gores explains that “My title is Spade & Archer and I’m revving up the research right now. I have my own research from 1975 for Hammett, and am digging out a great deal of new stuff now. I hope to start writing the novel in March or April ... It is a really exciting project to be working on.”

You can say that again. Sign me up for a copy.