Lantic policia i detectiu alemany Bernie Gunther treballa, amb nom fals, de conserge en un hotel de la riviera francesa. És lany 1956 i de sobte el passat entra per la porta amb la forma de Harold Hennig, un excapità de les SS, responsable de la mort de milers de persones. Entre elles de la dona que en Bernie estimava. Una de les millors novel·les negres contemporànies!
Blackmail, espionage and a mass murderer from his wartime past await Bernie Gunther on the French Riviera. 'A brilliantly twisting tale of espionage and betrayal' Sunday Times
The French Riviera, 1956. A world-weary Bernie Gunther is working under a false name as a hotel concierge. His attempts to keep his nose clean go horribly awry when a wartime acquaintance sucks him into a blackmail plot involving one of the most famous British writers of the 20th century and the notorious Cambridge Spies.
Bernie is missing his old detective life when his past walks through the door in the shape of Harold Hennig, a former captain in the Nazi security service - the man who, in 1945, was responsible for the deaths of thousands, among them a woman Bernie loved. Hennig now enjoys a lucrative career as a blackmailer.
Hennig's target on the Cote d'Azur is a famous resident with a dark past and plenty to hide - the writer, Somerset Maugham. A shared love of bridge draws Bernie to Maugham's magnificent villa, where Maugham tells him of the existence of a very compromising photograph. Taken in 1937, it shows Maugham among a group of naked men beside a swimming pool - one of whom is the infamous spy and homosexual, Guy Burgess, who, with Donald Maclean, has recently defected to Moscow. Hennig has the photograph and is demanding $50,000 for its release.
Bernie is reluctant to become Maugham's agent but his former life has made him as vulnerable to blackmail as Maugham himself. Not only that - he has a massive score to settle with Hennig.
