The One From the Other (2006)

The One from the Other is a 2006 mystery thriller novel by the British writer Philip Kerr. It is the fourth in his series featuring the German private detective and former policeman Bernie Gunther. It revived the character, who had originally appeared in the "Berlin Noir" trilogy from 1989 to 1991. It takes place mostly around postwar Munich, Vienna as well as Garmisch-Partenkirchen in the Bavarian Alps where the 1936 Winter Olympics had been held. The novel was shortlisted for the CWA Historical Dagger in 2007.

Synopsis

Gunther opens the novel operating a struggling hotel that belongs to his now critically-ill wife in the Bavarian market town of Dachau, by then infamous for the Dachau concentration camp of the Nazi era. Realising he is unsuited to running a hotel, he decides to sell up and move to Munich and set up as a private detective. Yet all the cases he gets offered all revolve around the imprisoned war criminals and the campaign to release them in a potential amnesty, something he feels distinctly ambiguous about because of his own past as a reluctant member of the SS.