Summer 1942. When Bernie Gunther is ordered to speak at an international police conference, an old acquaintance has a favour to ask. Little does Bernie suspect what this simple surveillance task will provoke . . .

One year later, resurfacing from the hell of the Eastern Front, Bernie receives another task that seems straightforward: locating the father of Dalia Dresner, the rising star of German cinema. And if escaping Berlin for a beautiful woman isn't motivation enough, there's the small matter of the request's origin: Goebbels himself.

But Dresner's father hails from Yugoslavia, a country so riven by sectarian horrors that even Bernie's stomach is turned. And meanwhile the previous year's cold case lingers on, and there's only so long Bernie can stay away.

Bernie hasn't mellowed one iota, and his mordant wit and cynical observations are as sharp as ever. But even with monsters at home and abroad, one thing alone drives him on from Berlin to Zagreb to Zurich: Bernie Gunther has fallen in love.