Patrick McCoy's Reviews> Metropolis

Metropolis is the 14th and final Bernie Gunther novel completed shortly before Philip Kerr died in 2018. This one is set in 1928 when Gunther was first promoted to the Berlin Homicide Division. Political, economic, and social turmoil were prominent in the background of that time period. Gunther is assigned to the case of a serial killer preying on sex workers, specifically women forced into sex work in order to pay bills or rent. And, another killer is targeting handicapped WWI veterans who became panhandlers. As the investigation proceeds, Gunther negotiates the insane Weimar world that was Germany at that time: formidable criminal organizations, widespread drug use, the decadent sexual revolution, the strum and drang between modernity and traditionalism, the rise of antisemitism and the Nazi Party. Gunther is strongly anti-Nazi, just a man trying to do his job as a police officer.