The Pale Criminal (A Bernie Gunther novel) / Philip Kerr

This is the second or third Bernie Gunther novel I have read, this one taking place in Berlin in 1938 when the excesses of the Nazis begin to boil over and their hatred of the Jews culminates in Kristallnacht. Reinhard Heydrich, chief of the Reich's Main Security Office (including the Gestapo, Kripo, and Sicherheitsdienst) reenlists Gunther in the Kriminalpolizei to investigate a series of murders of typically Aryan maidens, who are kidnapped and ritually killed in a manner that seems to suggest a sadistic Jewish plot. Gunther's investigations uncover a plot that is anything but what it appears to be upon first inspection.

What makes the Bernie Gunther series work is his skepticism and barely disguised disdain for the Nazi administration, and his attempts to work for justice in a society that increasingly devalues it. The historical context of these novels is what fascinates me—there’s a lengthy discussion about the burning of the Reichstag, for example; a train leaves from the Anhalter Bahnhof, which today survives as a ghostly fragment in the modern city of Berlin; the infighting and backstabbing and corruption within the Nazi regime—there’s so much to keep the reader consulting background information and bringing up old prewar photos on the internet.

The Anhalter Bahnhof as it looks today.

A prewar photo of the Anhalter Bahnhof

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Here we are / Graham Swift

This short novel offers a nostalgic look at England in the 1940s and 1950s. Evie, having just lost her husband after a long marriage, looks back at the fateful summer when they met up at the pleasure palace at the end of the Brighton pier. Evie was meant to marry someone else, Ronnie Doane, aka “The Great Pablo,” a magician whose talents really pull in the crowds in the days before television kept people in their front rooms (and to whom she serves as the feather-plumed magician’s assistant). The novel tells of Ronnie’s back story as a London child war evacuee, whose second family in Oxford is so nurturing and loving that he is conflicted about going back to his real home when the war is over. But Evie marries Jack instead and is ghosted (quite literally) by Ronnie even in her final years of life. A wonderful story about people and relationships.

Addie Pray / Joe David Brown (more recently published as Paper Moon ) Click here to check for availability at AFPLS This 1971 novel was the inspiration for the Peter Bogdanovich movie Paper Moon . Eleven-year-old Addie and her maybe-father “Long Boy” Moses Pray crisscross the Deep South “ramifying” (scamming) people during the Great Depression. Addie’s street smarts and perceived girlish innocence, along with Long Boy’s cleverness and shrewd business acumen build their operation until they are dealing in millions. The movie remained pretty true to the first half of the book (though it moved the location from Alabama to Kansas), but the adventures continue far beyond where the movie left off. The decades haven’t dimmed the magic of this rollicking adventure, either in the film or the book. ©Ken Vesey, 17 June 2010

The Sweetness at the Bottom of the Pie / Alan Bradley

Pippi Longstocking meets Miss Marple in the character of precocious 11-year-old Flavia de Luce, the youngest of three daughters in a once well-to-do family in early 1950s rural England. This first mystery in an intended series finds Flavia beating the local police inspector at his own game in solving the mystery surrounding the murder of an old school mate of her father's in their back garden (in the cucumber patch no less). Clues include a bird indigenous to Norway, a rare stamp, and a bit of flaky pie crust. This nostalgic and innocent whodunnit will have you at the edge of your seat by its suspenseful climax. I can see BBC/PBS picking up on the popularity of this charming mystery. The second in the series has already been published and the third is soon to follow. And by the way, here's a great library quote from Flavia on page 50: "... it occurred to me that Heaven must be a place where the library is open twenty-four hours a day, seven days a week. No

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