Greeks Bearing Gifts is the 13th and penultimate title in Philip Kerr's series of historical novels based on the experiences of Bernie Gunther a one-time detective with the Berlin Police dating from the latter stages of Weimar Germany. This tale begins with Bernie back in Germany, but not Berlin. Given that the story is set in the year 1957, Berlin other than the part of the city occupied by the Western powers is smack dab in the middle of Communist run East Germany. Bernie has managed to reenter Germany under an assumed name, Christof Ganz, and has found himself a position in a Munich hospital, cleaning and dressing cadavers to make their appearance as good as possible in the event they have any family or friends to mourn their passing.

Bernie has always been a victim of rotten luck in his endeavors to create a new life for himself in the aftermath of World War II during which he was drafted into some unpleasant associations and jobs in the SS despite his never having been a Nazi. This time he is recognized by a cop, one Christian Schramma who, threatens him with exposure of his false identity and fingering for criminal offenses he never committed. Gunther is forced to be an accomplish to a sting in which a candidate for office will be set up to accept a major campaign contribution from what will turn out to be representative of East German foreign intelligence. The burn turns into something more serious when Schramma murders the candidate's representative, a General Heinkel and the East German spook.

Bernie locks Schramma in the room with the victims and he and the candidate, one Max Merten, conspire to neutralize Schramma without killing him and Merten, grateful for Gunther's effort uses his influence to get him a job with Munich RE insurance as a claims adjustor.

Bernie's detective experience serves him well in his new position and he immediately saves the firm a significant payout on a life insurance claim. As a result the management assigns him to a marine insurance property claim based on a sunken ship caused by a fire. The claimant is a scuba diver and underwater film maker located in Greece. And this assignment sets the main plot in motion.

Munich RE's man in Athens, Achilles Garlopis, is assigned to work with Bernie and provide escort and translation services during the claim investigation. He is not much more than a time server, whose only singular character trait that one would associate with an insurance man, is an instinct for risk mitigation, that is, avoiding any physical risk to himself.

Of course, the circumstances surrounding the fire and sinking of the ship turn out to not be straightforward and Bernie believes he is going to be able to save Munich RE another packet of dough and get back to Germany as soon as possible. But the story of the ill-fated Doris, the owner of the ship, its captain, and the cast of supporting characters is extremely complex and involves a number of personalities who behaved very badly during the German occupation of Greece during the late war. There is even involvement by members of the Israeli Mossad who are looking for information to enable them to apprehend a major character in the novel who is wanted for war crimes. As usual in the Gunther novels there is a mixture of characters from real life with the fictitious members and Kerr provides and appendix with the details of their personal histories.

Those readers who have an appreciation for classic movies will appreciate the hat tip to Double Indemnity and the character named Walther Neff, whose illness creates the rationale for dispatching Gunther to Greece in the first place.

Greeks Bearing Gifts is a terrific read, complete with a plot twists, escapes from fatal danger and femme fatales that are common to all of the Bernie Gunther novels. I am happy to recommend it and all of the Bernie Gunther novels. ( )

The thirteenth adventure featuring Bernie Gunther lives up to the high and entertaining standards of the previous novels. This one, set in 1957, finds Gunther back in Germany after spending years in South America, Cuba and France, living under an assumed name and still anxious to avoid both the police and ex-Nazis after his earlier life. He is in a quiet job, working in a Munich mortuary, when through an old acquaintance, he is offered a post as claims investigator with an insurance firm. What Bernie thinks will be another quiet role, quickly turns dangerous, first with a run-in with an ex-colleague policeman and then being sent to Athens to investigate a claim for a sunken boat. As ever, Kerr ramps up the tension with some wonderful plotting and crisp dialogue as Bernie become ensnared in a plot by ex-Nazis and he is forced to work for the Greek police and the Israeli Ha’ Mossad.

Bernie is offered a job as an insurance assessor for Munich RE and one of his first jobs is to go to Greece to assess a claim for a sunken ship. Little does he realise it will bring him back in touch with Nazi war criminals. As always populated with a number of real characters and shines a light on the horrific treatment of the Thessalonian Jews by the Nazis. It also hints at the way some ex-Nazis evaded trials for war crimes and were used by the Americans, Germans, Egyptians and Syrians. ( )

Greeks Bearing Gifts, by Philip Kerr is another offering in the author’s Bernie Gunther series. If you haven’t read any books in this series, you should know that Bernie is a German who served in the German police prior to World War II. When the Nazi’s came to power, he never joined the political party. He did however continue as a commissar investigating murders which occurred during this troubled period. He is constantly torn between maintaining his humanity in a world that has gone mad and serving his bosses. If he did not produce results he would no doubt quickly become just another statistic. In this book taking place after the war, Bernie finds himself in Greece working as an insurance adjuster for a German company. He is living under an assumed named as his history continues to follow him even though the war has ended. He is not alone in this as familiar faces from his past crop up to complicate his life. Bernie battles to maintain his freedom and what is left of his humanity. For those of us who have read previous books in the series the gift here is the chance to once again follow Bernie’s constant struggle to salvage some good out of his checkered past. ( )

Another intelligent adventure, another moral dilemma of conscience, for our anti-hero, Bernie. With no compromise on his principles, he manages to lose the beautiful woman, which seemed inevitable all along. Bernie works hard to achieve little, but Kerr moves the action briskly, with superior readability. One feels, deeply, the heavy, corrupt atmosphere, so typical of post WWII Europe. Kerr's characters fill his books with believable reactions to the chaos that seems, at times, to overwhelm them. I feel this author's style compelling, and I am drawn, time and again, to Kerr, and his Bernie. Unfortunately, his work was limited by his early death, in 2018. ( )