THE PALE CRIMINAL

The backdrop for this detective story is 1938 Berlin, where private eye Bernie Gunther has been shanghaied back into police work to catch a brutal serial killer. (Wait...aren't all serial killers brutal?) In the second installment of Kerr's Berlin Noir trilogy, Gunther's assignment leads him into the darker, clinical side of prewar Germany, and you can almost hear the scalpels being sharpened and the heels clicking. The production uses a neat hat trick. Narrator John Lee employs various English accents to signify the class and style of each German character. Lee is an ideal match for Kerr--he's previously delivered two other works by the author--and his authoritative, resonant tone makes this a classy package. R.W.S. © AudioFile 2008, Portland, Maine [Published: SEPTEMBER 2008]