Book review: Losing the plot in Argentina - A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr

Published on Friday 7 March 2008 20:13

A Quiet Flame by Philip Kerr Quercus, 407pp, £14.99

PHILIP KERR'S FIRST BERNIE GUNTHER novels set in post-Nazi war- ravaged Germany were agreeably dark, well-plotted, original.

A Quiet Flame, which moves from Germany in 1932-3, in the tense months either side of Hitler's coming to power, to post-war Argentina, a refuge for Nazi war criminals, is an accomplished, smoothly professional mystery, but lacks something of the sharp authenticity of those early Gunther books.

This is partly perhaps because Bernie himself has become less credible and is now a sentimentalised version of what he was in previous books. Such a development is common enough: think of Reginald Hill's Andy Dalziel, even of Chandler's Marlowe.

The novel opens with Gunther's arrival in Argentina, in the company of Adolf Eichmann. Eichmann actually plays no part in the plot; he is there merely as window-dressing. It is not made clear (to me anyway) just why Gunther has had to seek refuge in Argentina (even though he had served in the SS, despite being previously a fervent anti-Nazi), but let that pass. He is recruited by an Argentinian policeman, Colonel Montalban, who as a young man studied law in Berlin and was then fascinated by what he learned of some of Gunther's cases. Now he draws his attention to a murder that in style and method seems to bear a close resemblance to the unsolved murder of a young girl in Berlin in 1932. Is it possible, he suggests, that the man Gunther was looking for then may be among the Nazis now living in Argentina?

This is a pretty extravagant, credulity-stretching basis for a plot, even in a thriller that shows evidence of the influence of Frederick Forsyth; but it does well enough.

The narrative now moves between Gunther's memories of that first murder and his investigation of Nazis in Argentina. Pre-Hitler Berlin is evoked luridly, post-war Argentina with much detail but less conviction.

The second plot is complicated. Nothing is as it seems, not even the interview Gunther has with Eva Peron. Does her husband the President's perverted taste for under-age girls have a significant part to play? Of course it does; it leads Gunther to solving the original crime and to an encounter with the notorious Dr Mengele, who experimented on prisoners in the death camps.

There is no real need for Mengele to be the key to the mystery – except that we have all heard of him and think of him with horror, and so we are pleased when Bernie beats him up. But it might have been a more convincing book if Kerr had given us a villain formed entirely from his own imagination.

There is a love interest: a Jewish girl in search of her uncle and aunt who arrived in Argentina and mysteriously disappeared. She turns to Bernie for help and this leads to the two most effective scenes in the Argentinian portion of the novel, one of which is genuinely chilling.

Yet even this, and the rapidity of the plot-driven narrative, are not enough to compensate for the weaknesses of the novel. First of these is the role – one can't say character, for he has none – of Colonel Montalban, the spider spinning the web of intrigue. He comes across as an entirely phoney figure – one who would have failed to convince even a hundred years ago when readers of thrillers and mysteries were less demanding than we are today.

The second weakness is the style of Bernie's narrative voice. Some of the renderings of 1930s German police-talk may well have an authentic basis, but that is not how they sound. Far too much of the time Bernie's narration echoes, rather dimly, the hard-boiled Californian style of the 1930s and '40s. It is full of wisecracks that don't even crackle, let alone snap. He sounds like Ross Macdonald's Lew Archer on a bad day or a wet afternoon.

The novel is enjoyable enough, good-quality airport fiction. But that's all it is, which is sad, because the early Bernie Gunther novels were so much more than that.

It may be that after so many novels the vein is exhausted, but I hope not. It would be good to have Bernie back on form in future and treated less indulgently.