If the Dead Rise Not – Philip Kerr

Detective Bernie Gunther navigates two corrupt regimes in this “richly satisfying mystery…that evokes the noir sensibilities of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald while breaking new ground of its own”( Los Angeles Times ). Berlin, 1934 . Former policeman Bernie Gunther, now a hotel detective, finds himself caught between warring factions of the Nazi apparatus as Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, connive to soft-pedal Nazi anti-Semitism before the 1936 Olympiad…   Havana, 1954 . Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power; Castro is in prison; and the American Mafia is gaining a stranglehold on Cuba’s exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, after being kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced with a relatively peaceful new life. But he discovers that he cannot truly outrun his past when he collides with an old love and a vicious killer from his Berlin days…