A dark book on a sunny day. PRAGUE FATALE - by Phillip Kerr. Bernie Gunther, former homicide detective for Kripo---the criminal investigative branch within German police forces---and later P.I. in pre-WWII Berlin, has been sent home from the horrors of the eastern front and installed as an intelligence agent in the Nazi SD. He is summoned to Nazi-occupied Prague, Czechoslovakia in 1942 to serve as something of an investigative bodyguard for the cruel 'Reich Protector' of the new German provinces of Bohemia & Moravia: Reinhard Heydrich. While there in the SS officer's castle headquarters he becomes involved in a murder investigation that stabs towards the heart of the Nazi mythos, threatening its destruction. A scurrilous cast of Nazi characters are interrogated, but the real culprit is the very last one suspected. And the reasons: as vile in their disregard for human life as their party line is for human decency. Bernie is lucky to get out with his life---before the real BIG crime hits the Obergruppenführer, a sick man in a crumbling castle in the forsaken Czech capital. #praguefatale #staffpicks #phillipkerr #berniegunther #noir (at Himmel Park Library)