A serial sex murderer is killing Aryan teenage girls in Berlin - and what's worse, he's making utter fools of the police. an investigation in which he finds himself exploring the crankier side of modern German medicine and psychotherapy. Occasionally he will foreshadow some event, suggesting that if he had known then what he came to know later he might have acted or spoken differently – but even in those instances he doesn’t reveal too much to the reader, leaving that lovely uncertainty as motivation for turning the page again and again. The first person narrator and principal character is one Bernhard (Bernie) Gunther, a hard-boiled homicide detective who quits the Berlin police force (the Kripo) because he doesn’t want to become a member of the National Socialist (Nazi) Party.

With some very clever and intricate plotting Kerr has managed to meld some disturbing real life events with excellent story telling. One of Bernie’s traveling companions on this trip was the notorious Nazi war criminal Adolph Eichmann.Her hair was every bit as natural as a parade goose-stepping down the Wilhelmstrasse, and she’d evidently been wearing a boxing-glove when she’d applied the crimson lipstick to her paperclip of a mouth.

Anyway, it was a quick, entertaining read if you like detective novels, and it may lead you to contemplate how our era resembles (or doesn't) the 1930's.

That said, the atmospherics, level of authentic historical detail, and genre-nailing fun kept me going here. It is 1938 and Bernie Gunther is back on the mean streets of Berlin with his new partner, Bruno Stahlecker, another ex-police officer.