Bernie on Bernie: I didn’t like Bernie Gunther very much. He was cynical and world-weary and hardly had a good word to say about anyone, least of all himself. He’d had a pretty tough war . . . and done a few things he wasn’t proud of. It had been no picnic for him since then either; it didn’t seem to matter where he spread life’s tartan rug, there was always a turd on the grass.

Striding across Europe through the killing fields of three decades—from riot-torn Berlin in 1931 to Adenauer’s Germany in 1954, awash in duplicitous “allies” busily undermining each other—Field Gray reveals a world based on expediency where the ends justify the means and no one can be trusted. It brings us a hero who is sardonic, tough-talking, and cynical, but who does have a rough sense of humor and a rougher sense of right and wrong. He’s Bernie Gunther. He drinks too much and smokes excessively and is somewhat overweight (but a Russian prisoner of war camp will take care of those bad habits).

He’s Bernie Gunther—a brave man because when there is nothing left to lose, honor rules.