A review by ericfheiman
A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr

3.0

I'm not much of a genre fiction reader, but I do admit to being a sucker for Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther detective novels that fuse Raymond Chandler with a well-researched Germany under the Third Reich setting. This combination creates an oddly compelling hybrid that raises the standard moral stakes of detective fiction to something much more existential and tragic. This novel—the 5th in the series—suffers a bit from its post-WWII South America setting, but keeps one's attention by adding a related flashback plotline that takes place just before the fall of the Weimar Republic.