The Other Side of Silence

For the 2002 novel, see André Brink.

The Other Side of Silence

Author	Philip Kerr
Language	English
Series	Bernie Gunther
Genre	Crime thriller
Publisher	Quercus Publishing
Publication date	2016
Publication place	United Kingdom
Media type	Print
Preceded by	The Lady from Zagreb
Followed by	Prussian Blue

The Other Side of Silence is a 2016 crime thriller novel by the British author Philip Kerr. It is the eleventh in his series featuring Bernie Gunther, a former Berlin police detective. Noirish in tone, it takes place both in 1956 and with flashbacks to 1938 and 1945. It was shortlisted for the 2016 CWA Historical Dagger.

Synopsis

It is 1956 and Gunther is still working as the concierge at a hotel on the French Riviera. Drawn into the orbit of the celebrated but aged English writer William Somerset Maugham, he is tasked with a comparatively simple task of paying off a blackmailer for £50,000 in exchange for a photograph showing the homosexual Maugham taking part in an orgy during the 1930s with the spy Guy Burgess and others. Gunther knows the blackmailer Harold Hennig, a former officer in the Nazi SD. Having first encountered him in Berlin in early 1938 at the time of the Blomberg–Fritsch affair, they met again during the Battle of Königsberg and Gunther held Hennig responsible for the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff in the Baltic.

Bibliography

• Lake, Anthony. Nazi Germany and the Holocaust in Historical Crime Fiction. Taylor & Francis, 2023.
• Pepper, Andrew, Pagello, Federico, Migozzi, Jacques, Dall'Asta, Monica. Contemporary European Crime Fiction: Representing History and Politics. Springer International, 2023.
• Sandberg, Eric. 100 Greatest Literary Detectives. Bloomsbury Publishing, 2018.