EPITAPH FOR A SPY - Eric Ambler

Josef Vadassy is a Hungarian refugee living in France earning a living as a language teacher.

While on holiday on the Riviera he innocently takes a roll of film of his holiday into be developed and as a result he is arrested as a Gestapo Agent.

What follows is an intriguing tale of espionage with Josef trying to uncover the real spy prior to his world being destroyed.

It's very Agatha Christie in that it has a cast of characters all in one place at one time with the  spy being one of them. There the comparison ends, its very well written and the tension is continually built. This is Ambler at his peak. (Published in 1938)

FIELD GRAY - Philip Kerr

This is the seventh "Bernie Gunther" novel.   Again, like "If the Dead Rise Not " most of it is told in back story spanning the years 1954 back to 1931 with the rise of the Nazi's.

It starts with Bernie being captured off the coast of Cuba by the CIA and ends with him back in Europe.

The main gist of the novel is Bernie's inter action with a German communist Erich Mielke, a real person, who was head of the East German Security System from 1957 until 1989.  Meilke was one of the most hated men that the East German communist regime threw up.

There is no mystery here just a history of the 25 years the novel encompasses.   Its a great read with the interweaving of fact with fiction fascinating but if you are expecting a straight line plot you will be disappointed.

One thing that stuck out for me was how complicit the French were in loading the trains for the death camps, they were great supporters and as Bernie points out in the book then stuck their hand up to be one of the occupying powers.

We have Bernie double crossing, being double crossed and then I suppose a triple cross at the end bringing the story to a close.  Again lots of violence as these novels have always dished up.

I loved it, Kerr can write and he has got better and better and is now a "real" novelist, not just a "crime" novelist , to me he is literary and is still extremely readable, two thumbs up.  (Published 2011)