Prague Fatale (2011) by Philip Kerr

Philip Kerr was a British author who garnered wide success with his World War II thriller series about Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther, Kriminal Commissar, which began as a trilogy and appeared to have been completed by 1991, but Kerr resurrected the series in 2006 – continued until his death in 2018. There were a total of 14 novels in the Bernie "Berlin Noir" series and the eighth title, Prague Fatale (2011), has been hovering in my peripheral ever since its publication. 

Prague Fatale is presented as a historical locked room thriller. Admittedly, the premise and backdrop is not without interest, or intrigue, but the book was published in 2011 and experience taught me not to expect too much from the more mainstream crime novels claiming to be homages to the classical locked room mystery ("worthy of Agatha Christie"). Particularly those written in the 2000s and early 2010s (e.g. Gilbert Adair's The Act of Roger Murgatroyd, 2006). So never really bothered getting a copy, but recently, Prague Fatale somehow kept coming to my attention. It culminated with JJ listing the book among the greats of the genre, "A Locked Room Library – One Hundred Recommended Books," saying "the historical novel and the puzzle plot have rarely meshed so effectively." We'll see about that! 

Prague Fatale is the eighth title to feature Bernie Gunther, a patriotic German policeman, who Kerr described as "a gumshoe in the grand and seamy tradition of Philip Marlowe and Sam Spade" with "the toughest beat in detective fiction" – a Germany under the complete control of the National Socialists. Only he's not one of them. Just like "most people who supported the old Republic," Bernie is neither a Nazi or a Communist, which is why he left his position with the Berlin police. When the Nazis took over, General Reinhard Heydrich ordered him back as Bernie "wasn't about to chalk someone up for a crime just because they were Jewish" and that was useful to Heydrich ("...from time to time I'm useful to him in the same way a toothpick might be useful to a cannibal"). So he often finds himself in precarious situations, getting kicked around or forced to dirty his hands. Such as commanding the firing squad that executed dozens of Russian POWs and delivering "the coup de grâce to at least ten of them as they lay groaning on the ground." He also lost his wife in the Spanish influenza pandemic of 1918 and never had any lasting luck in relationships since.

You can add Bernie to the long list of troubled cops that dominate the modern crime and thriller genre, but, as you probably gathered from this brief summation, he actually has a legitimate reason to be more than a little jaded. Bernie finds the thought of suicide “a real comfort” not because he's trapped in a deteriorating marriage with rebelling, teenage children and a fondness for the bottle, but because he's continuously forced to compromise everything he once believed by the very people he despises the most. Bernie's struggle and the situations he finds himself trapped in appear to be the main selling point of this non-linearly series as each novel takes place in different periods covering Hitler's rise to power, the war itself and the beginning of the Cold War. For example, the last posthumously published entry in the series, Metropolis (2019), is a prequel set in 1928. So with all that baggage out of the way, let's jump into this dark, gritty historical locked room mystery. 

Prague Fatale takes place in September and October, 1941, and the first-half gives readers new to the series a pretty good idea why it has been called "Berlin Noir" or "Nazi Noir." Bernie Gunther has returned from Ukraine, where he witnessed the horrors of the executions pits, to pick up his post as Kriminal Commissar and pretend to be a proper detective, but discovers upon his return he's not the only one who has chanced – as the was has also left its traces on Berlin. There was a shortage of everything from food and beer ("...only powdered milk and powdered eggs" which "tasted like the masonry dust shaken from our ceilings by RAF bombs") to clothing ("...coupons paid for an emperor's new clothes and not much else") and cigarettes. While everything around them was neglected, breaking down or kaput and the new law obliging Jews in Germany to wear a yellow star only added to the dystopian ambiance. Berliners were still killing each other with new motives for murder that "stemmed from the quaint new realities of Berlin life," while the blackouts provide a cover for some real violent crimes. These are the mean streets of World War II-era Berlin.

So during the first-half, Bernie investigates the brutal murder of a Dutch volunteer railway worker, Geert Vranken, whose mangled, torn asunder remains were found along the train track with his pockets turned inside out. When the coroner finds about half a dozen stab wounds on what remained of the torso, Bernie knows he has a murder on his hands, but not one his superiors are keen to give any attention at the moment ("...you think the Ministry is going to be happy to learn that there's another killer at work on the S-Bahn?"). But that's not all. One evening, Bernie saves a woman, named Arianne Tauber, who was assaulted in the streets and he chased off the assailant. But the next day, he's confronted with that assailant once again when his body turns up in the Heinrich von Kleist Park. Is there a connection between all these cases and incidents?

I don't think many of the regular readers of this blog will find much to enjoy about the bleak, sordid affairs making up the first-half of the story and Kerr does not shy away from describing the nauseating, gorier parts in graphic detail – like a hardboiled Paul Doherty. The story shifts gear during the second-half when Bernie receives an invitation he's simply not allowed to ignore.

General Reinhard Heydrich is promoted to Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia (Czechoslovakia) and planned a quiet weekend with friends to celebrate his appointment at the new place in Prague. The Lower Castle, "canary-yellow with a red roof, a square-tower portico painted white," is filled with "damned cauliflower." A reference to "the oak-leaf collar patches that distinguished SS generals, brigadiers, and colonels from lesser mortals." All of them important party members and close to the general. Bernie is informed he has been invited to the weekend party, because an attempt had been made to poison Heydrich and he wants Bernie to act as a detective and bodyguard. But then a murder is committed under seemingly impossible circumstances.

Hauptsturmführer Albert Kuttner, fourth adjutant to General Heydrich, is discovered dead in his first-floor bedroom with two bullet holes in his chest, but the door was locked from the inside with the key still in the lock and the windows securely bolted. There's no murder weapon inside the bedroom and a spent nine-millimeter Parabellum round is found on the floor down the corridor. Nobody heard a thing. So unless he was "shot by a man who could pass through solid walls," how could Kuttner have been killed inside a locked room? Heydrich tasks Bernie with investigating the murder and demands a solution, "before it can reach the ears of the Leader." No matter what impertinent questions he asked or whom he offended. And he expects his guests to fully cooperate with his investigation.

Even with the general's blessings, Bernie knows questioning some of the top brass of the Nazi party is not going to be as easy as in the books in which "a detective could turn up at a country house, question everyone, find some recognizable clues, and then arrest the butler over chilled cocktails in the library." However, the novella-length chapter covering the investigation and questioning most of the important suspects is the stuff of classics. The basic structure of this chapter is a good, old-fashioned whodunit with a locked room murder as its central puzzle, but considering the characters involved and the period, it required a flavor and atmosphere all of its own. Some of the suspects definitely find the questions to be impertinent and result in complaints, but Bernie deftly handles and turn the tables on all of them like a practiced snake charmer. While another much more talkative, easy-going suspect manages to surprise Bernie with a false-solution to the locked room puzzle of his own ("Why didn't I think of that?"). All in all, the best part of the book that makes me wish Kerr had written the whole series in a more conventional mold.

It has been remarked in other reviews that the locked room-trick is hardly original, which is absolutely true, but combined with the murderer's identity and a very good, original motive, elevated it to an outstanding historical mystery – comparable only to John Dickson Carr's underrated Captain Cut-Throat (1955). I'm just glad the key wasn't turned from the outside with a pair pliers, which is the modern-day equivalent of the secret passage. Anyway, Prague Fatale takes place in Nazi Germany and occupied Czechoslovakia, during the Second World War, which the ending rams home once the murder has been solved, but far from resolved. And any lingering illusions of the drawing room mystery is dissolved in the wink of an eye in the last couple of chapters. Brutally so.

So mystery readers of a more traditional bend will find the first-half of Prague Fatale rough going, but the second-half delivers a small, dark and memorable gem of the Golden Age-style country house mystery with a decidedly un-British backdrop and cast of characters. Prague Fatale might have been even better, bordering on a locked room classic, had the second-half been condensed into a novella, but that's mostly my own bias speaking. If you can take the gritty, historical noir and uncompromising depictions of the horrors of the Second World War with an unconventional, well-handled take on the traditional detective story, Kerr's Prague Fatale comes highly recommended as an excellent piece of historical fiction. 

A note for the curious: I had no idea where to fit this into the review, but Jim needs to know what he did. HUGE SPOILER/ROT13: V erpragyl erivrjrq nabgure bar bs Wvz'f erpbzzraqngvbaf, Jnygre F. Znfgrezna'f Gur Jebat Yrggre, juvpu hfrf rknpgyl gur fnzr ybpxrq ebbz-gevpx naq nyfb unq na vagrerfgvat pubvpr va vgf zheqrere. Shaavyl rabhtu, V gubhtug Gur Jebat Yrggre jnf gbb fubeg gb or gehyl rssrpgvir, juvyr Sngnyr Centhr pbhyq or fubegrarq sbe fvzvyne ernfbaf. Vg'f nyzbfg yvxr gurl'er sha ubhfr zveebe ersyrpgvbaf bs rnpu bgure naq fbzrubj gurfr jrer gur gjb gvgyrf V cvpxrq sebz Wvz'f ybpxrq ebbz yvfg gb fnzcyr. So, thankfully, they both turned out to be good detective stories in their own right or Jim would have some explaining to do.