PRAGUE FATALE

Canadian actor Paul Hecht gives a slow and appropriately cynical reading of Kerr’s eighth book featuring Berlin Kriminalpolizei detective Bernie Gunther. In fall 1941, Gunther is recently back from the Ukraine, where he saw the horrors of the Final Solution. He finds himself summoned to a Czech castle surrounded by SS Officers. He’s needed to solve a locked- room murder and protect the local Reichsprotektor and Gestapo leader. Hecht is precise when pronouncing German names and terms but without obtrusively overdoing the dialogue. The dry edge he puts into his voice is fitting to the character of Gunther, a man alienated from his own nation during a time of war. S.E.S. © AudioFile 2012, Portland, Maine [Published: JUNE 2012]