Michael likes...

Field Gray, the seventh of the Bernie Gunther mystery/thrillers, is one of Philip Kerr's best, a taut and psychologically complex story of a flawed man trying to maintain his humanity in the morally distorted world of occupied, postwar Germany. This book is actually a perfect introduction to the series and its antiheroic protagonist, since it touches on all three stages of his career--as a Weimar-era Berlin detective, as a wartime "fixer" for Heydrich and the SA, and as a postwar private eye, bodyguard, and spy.