The One from the Other

Bernie Gunther had his first brush with evil as a cop in Berlin in 1936, and he was to get to know it more intimately as a private eye as each case drew him deeper into the enormities of Hitler's Germany. Forced into the SS and sent to serve on the Eastern Front, he experienced the full brutality of the regime in the killing fields of Ukraine, and by war's end, made his way back to Berlin, and then on to Vienna.

As "THE ONE FROM THE OTHER" opens, it is 1949. Berlin and Vienna have become too dangerous for Bernie and he has moved on to Munich and reestablished himself there as a private eye. There is a lot of slightly disreputable work to be had in Munich: cleaning up the Nazi backgrounds of well-to-do locals, helping fugitive war criminals flee abroad. It's work that fills him with disgust—but it also fills his wallet. Then Frau Britta Warzok seeks him out, asking him to investigate her husband's disappearance. No, she doesn't want him back—he is a war criminal, an SS Hauptsturmfuhrer who ran one of the most vicious concentration camps in Poland. She merely wants confirmation that he is in fact dead. It's a simple job. But in postwar Germany, nothing is simple—nothing is what it appears to be. Taking the case, Bernie takes on far more than he'd bargained for, and before long, he is on the run, facing enemies on every side because in postwar Germany, it's hard to know friends from enemies, the one from the other.