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    Greeks Bearing Gifts
    Unavailable
    Greeks Bearing Gifts
    Unavailable
    Greeks Bearing Gifts
    Audiobook13 hours

    Greeks Bearing Gifts

    Written by Philip Kerr

    Narrated by John Lee

    4/5

    ()

    Currently unavailable

    Currently unavailable

    About this audiobook

    A vicious murder puts Bernie Gunther on the trail of World War 2 criminals in Greece in this riveting historical thriller in Philip Kerr's New York Times bestselling series.

    Munich, 1956. Bernie Gunther has a new name, a chip on his shoulder, and a dead-end career when an old friend arrives to repay a debt and encourages "Christoph Ganz" to take a job as a claims adjuster in a major German insurance company with a client in Athens, Greece.

    Under the cover of his new identity, Bernie begins to investigate a claim by Siegfried Witzel, a brutish former Wehrmacht soldier who served in Greece during the war. Witzel's claimed losses are large , and, even worse, they may be the stolen spoils of Greek Jews deported to Auschwitz. But when Bernie tries to confront Witzel, he finds that someone else has gotten to him first, leaving a corpse in his place.

    Enter Lieutenant Leventis, who recognizes in this case the highly grotesque style of a killer he investigated during the height of the war. Back then, a young Leventis suspected an S.S. officer whose connection to the German government made him untouchable. He's kept that man's name in his memory all these years, waiting for his second chance at justice...

    Working together, Leventis and Bernie hope to put their cases—new and old—to bed. But there's a much more sinister truth to acknowledge: A killer has returned to Athens...one who may have never left.

    LanguageEnglish
    PublisherPenguin Random House Audio
    Release dateApr 3, 2018
    ISBN9780399566516
    Unavailable
    Greeks Bearing Gifts
    Author

    Philip Kerr

    Philip Kerr is the bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther thrillers, for which he received a CWA Dagger Award. Born in Edinburgh, he now lives in London. He is a life-long supporter of Arsenal. Follow @theScottManson on Twitter.

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    Reviews for Greeks Bearing Gifts

    4/5

    123 ratings12 reviews

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    • 3/5
      Very interesting historical background but way too long dialogues made it a slog to get through and put a damper on my enthusiasm for the book. The story pace picked up in the middle as the plot thickened but then got mired down in the last third as the author stretched it out with a lot of introspection and talk in general. What I will take away from this book is the historical context I was not aware of, Adenaeour pardoning so many Nazis and using them in his post WWII government, and the hints of Greek collaborators (or atleast beneficiaries) in top government positions there too post war.
    • 4/5
      This is the thirteenth and probably last of the Bernie Gunther thrillers (the author, Philip Kerr, died shortly before publication) and is a fitting finale for a flawed but still heroic protagonist.Living under an assumed name in 1950s Germany to escape his past involvement in Nazi affairs Gunther ends up as an insurance claims adjuster at which he very successfully uses his previous police skills to save his employers money. He is sent to Greece to investigate a claim against a sunken ship and is soon drawn into intrigue surrounding ex-Nazis trying to reclaim gold stolen from Greek Jews and lost in World War II and those trying to capture those Nazis.Although often working for and alongside senior and committed Nazi personnel during the War, Gunther was never devoted to the cause and focused on his job as a detective. This does not assuage his guilt about whether he is tainted by association, whether he could have acted differently to prevent some of the brutality he saw, or his fear of being arrested, or worse, as a war criminal. He does his job well, but finds himself being drawn into a despair about his own and society’s redemption.The book ends on an ambivalent note. Gunther achieves his professional goal by showing that the insurance claim he is investigating is a fraud, saving his employer huge amounts of money. It is less clear that his attempts to capture wanted war criminals on behalf of Greece will amount to anything approaching justice. His final act in the book is to appear to commit himself to aiding Israel’s Mossad in hunting down further Nazi war criminals.This book invokes time, place and politics very well while building an interesting criminal and thriller story.
    • 3/5
      I have liked other books in the Bernie Gunther series, but this one was not my favorite. I feel like Kerr was trying much too hard to mimic the potboiler/Raymond Chandler style of writing. So it left me a bit "meh".
    • 3/5
      It is 1957, and former Berlin detective Bernie Gunther is living in Munich under an assumed name, Christof Ganz. Bernie has made his share of enemies over the years, and is about to make a few more. Meanwhile, he is earning a modest salary as a mortuary attendant, has no love life, and foresees few favorable prospects on the horizon. Unexpectedly, a former acquaintance, Max Merten, offers to get Bernie a job as a claims adjuster for a German insurance company. Gunther, who has always been savvy, insightful, skeptical, and cynical, finds himself perfectly suited to his new position.

      The sinking of the Doris, a boat that went down in Greek waters, brings Bernie to the cradle of democracy, where he must decide if his company is required to pay the claim made by the Doris's captain, Siegfried Witzel. While in Greece, Bernie meets a host of colorful characters: Achilles Garlopis is his driver, translator, facilitator, and sidekick; Lieutenant Stavros Leventis, a Greek police officer, holds onto Bernie's passport to insure his cooperation; Elli Panatoniou, a stunning Greek siren, turns the head of every man she meets; and Rahel Eskenazi is an Israeli intelligence agent who threatens Bernie with bodily harm unless he tells her what she wants to know.

      "Greeks Bearing Gifts," by the late Philip Kerr, is a five-hundred-page book that is far too long, and gets bogged down in many confusing details that makes for tedious reading. This book is less compelling than the Gunther novels set during World War II. On the other hand, Kerr nicely captures the atmosphere of postwar Greece, whose citizens still hate the Germans for oppressing its people. In addition, we learn of the horrendous crimes committed by Hitler's thugs against the Jews of Salonika, and the shameful leniency granted to some of the Nazi mass murderers whom the Allies captured. Incredibly, some of these criminals spent little or no time in prison.

      As always, Bernie is great company. He is his usual self-deprecating and wisecracking self, always planning ahead and trying to protect himself against liars who skillfully lure their victims into their webs before they attack. The convoluted plot touches not only on the genocide perpetrated by the Third Reich during World War II, but also on the black market trade in antiquities, ruthless and avaricious Nazis, and an unlikely romance between Bernie and the aforementioned Elli. The conclusion leaves our hero's future up in the air. Even though Philip Kerr passed away in March, we may not have seen the last of the witty, impertinent, and reckless Bernie Gunther--a decent fellow whose conscience leads him to stick his neck out when it would be wiser to hide behind the nearest rock.
    • 5/5
      It looks like Bernie will be next be involved in the search for Adolph Eichmann.
    • 4/5
      Seemingly tedious with extended history lessons in the early going, but all worth it leading up to it all being well wrapped up, the history and Bernie's life.
    • 4/5
      Bernie settles into another new name and life as an insurance adjuster. He is sent to Greece to investigate the loss of a ship. He establishes a German/WW2 connection resulting in the murder of the claimant. This ship was seeking gold stolen from the Jews of Athens and scuttled in the Med to save it from the Nazis. And then as always with Bernie, the rest is history. A vengeful policeman, several Nazi or of similar ilk villains, the local branch of the Mossad, and a Greek sort of former collaborator as a tour guide with the proverbial interesting woman make up the rest of the cast. Kerr always tells an interesting tale.
    • 4/5
      Another delightful mystery with the irascible Bernie Gunther by your side. This time post war Munich and Greece is the setting.
    • 4/5
      Good story
    • 3/5
      I’ve been a fan of the Bernie Gunther series for many years – and indeed of most of Kerr’s fiction (although, to be honest, a few of his thrillers are complete potboilers). Greeks Bearing Gifts is the thirteenth Bernie Gunther book, and the one following it, Metropolis, is unfortunately the last, as Kerr died last year. (And yes, I do have them all in first edition hardback.) Gunther is working as a porter at a hospital in Munich when he’s recognised by a local cop and blackmailed into assisting with a shakedown of a local bigwig with Communist connections. It goes wrong but gets Gunther a job at a reputable insurance company as an investigator. Which is why he ends up in Athens, investigating a claim for a yacht owned by a German that sank while searching for sunken treasure. Except, of course, nothing is ever that simple in a Bernie Gunther novel: and not only are the circumstances surrounding the sinking dodgy, but so too is the treasure they’re hunting – it’s gold stolen from Jews, basically – but then the owner of the yacht is murdered, and Bernie is up to his neck in events resulting from wartime incidents which he himself experienced but which make him look like a war criminal when he’s actually not one. They’re cleverly done these books, they treat their subject seriously. Kerr does his research and backs it up, and they show – through the point of view of a slightly corrupted witness – the many atrocities the Nazis committed and which people are now all too happy to dismiss. It’s quite simple: anyone who defends the Nazis is a Nazi. They were evil scum, and as the years pass and we learn quite how evil they actually were, so sympathising with them becomes even less justifiable. Bernie Gunther is a sympathetic character, and he worked with many Nazis – including a number of well-known ones, as is thrown in his face at one point in this novel. But he was never a Nazi and never sympathised with their views. And Kerr has used him extensively to criticise Nazi thought and views. It’s just a shame the people most likely to promote Nazi views are too stupid to read Kerr’s novel. Or indeed read books.
    • 4/5
      Other reviewers have written about the storyline so I'm not going to repeat their comments. There's plenty of local colour about Greece, especially Athens. I liked the comparison of the Hotel Grande Bretagne in Athens to the Hotel Adlon in Berlin, the site of many of Bernie's adventures.This book was less violent and edgy than several others in the series, it's more muted. Of course Bernie is getting on in age, I think he is 58 or so. It's a good interesting and readable story. I enjoyed it and look forward to the last in the series. I agree that Bernie is likely to become a Nazi hunter in order to make his amends.Even though this is #13 in the series, it can easily be read as a standalone. The author did a good job of saying enough about Bernie's history so that a reader does not feel left out if he or she hasn't read any others in the series.Recommended.

      1 person found this helpful

    • 4/5
      This novel was sent to me by the publisher G. P. Putnam's Sons via NetGalley. Thank you.The penultimate Bernie Gunther novel has Bernie in a dead-end job. Literally. He is back in Germany in 1957, not in his beloved Berlin but in Munich, where he has a job in a hospital morgue. He is passing himself off as Christof Ganz but this does not stop a Munich cop from recognizing him from his days as a detective in Berlin. He blackmails Bernie into helping him with a robbery but when the caper fails and the intended victim, an important German politician with a checkered past, gratefully offers to get Bernie a better job in an insurance company as a claims adjuster. This is right up Bernie’s alley and when he uses his detective skills to save the company a bundle of money on a faulty claim, his bosses up his salary, give him a company car, and offer him a “holiday” in Greece where he can relax after looking into an accident involving a sunken yacht insured by the company.But, of course, nothing is for free in Bernie’s life. Almost as soon as he starts to investigate the story of the sunken yacht he becomes embroiled in yet more murders which lead back to very familiar territory, Nazis committing crimes against humanity. This time it is Greece during WW2. In a plot worthy of the mythological labyrinth designed by Daedalus, Bernie has to clear himself of a murder charge in order to reclaim his passport while he is figuring out if the yacht’s owner was trying to smuggle Greek antiquities or Jewish gold out of the country. And it doesn’t help that the murdered guy is Bernie’s client the yacht owner. And all the while Bernie smells a rat, like he is being manipulated by people who have more than his self-interest at heart.This novel has the usual Bernie trappings. There are interesting side characters as well as the obligatory beautiful woman who appears to fall for Bernie. However, with the wisdom of age and past experience Bernice knows this affair will go nowhere. He is too old for her and, frankly, too tired to play the amorous game. As far as the murders are concerned. Bernie is dogged in his pursuit of the truth and guilt-ridden by his role in the Nazi regime. Still, Bernie seems to have had a shift in his self-worth and is beginning to believe that even he is capable of redemption if he can do something significant to atone for his participation, even unwillingly, in the German atrocities. There are a few hints about the final novel in the series which comes out next year. Bernie has a curious meeting with a mysterious woman who is part of Ha’ Mossad. Could Bernie help with the capture of the most important Nazi still free? After all, Bernie does know Albert Eichmann…….Philip Kerr is greatly missed.