March Violets by Philip Kerr

Hailed by Salman Rushdie as a "brilliantly innovative thriller-writer," Philip Kerr is the creator of taut, gripping, noir-tinged mysteries that are nothing short of spellbinding. The first book of the Berlin Noir trilogy, March Violets introduces readers to Bernie Gunther, an ex-policeman who thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin; until he turned freelance and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture.

Bernhard Gunther, a hard-boiled Berlin detective who specializes in tracking down missing persons-mostly Jews. He is summoned by a wealthy industrialist to find the murderer of his daughter and son-in-law, killed during the robbery of a priceless diamond necklace.

Gunther quickly is catapulted into a major political scandal involving Hitler's two main henchmen, Goering and Himmler. The search for clues takes Gunther to morgues overflowing with Nazi victims; raucous nightclubs; the Olympic games where Jesse Owens tramples the theory of Aryan racial superiority; the boudoir of a famous actress; and finally to the Dachau concentration camp. Fights with Gestapo agents, shoot-outs with adulterers, run-ins with a variety of criminals, and dead bodies in unexpected places keep readers guessing to the very end.

Hard-hitting, fast-paced, and richly detailed, March Violets is noir writing at its blackest and best.

This book is part of the "Bernie Gunther" series.
Here are some other books from this series: