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The beautiful game just got ugly.

In Athens, where London City is set to play Olympiacos in the Champion’s League, the temperature is high, and tempers even higher. Greece is rioting and manager Scott Manson is keeping his team on a tight leash. There must be no drinking, no nightlife and no women. After the game, they are to get back to London refreshed and ready for a crucial match at home stadium Silvertown Docks.

But Scott didn’t plan for death on the pitch. When City’s star striker collapses mid-match, it shocks the nation. Is it a heart attack? Or something more sinister? As the Greek authorities mount a murder investigation, Scott Manson must find the truth — and fast — to get his team home in time.

The second Scott Manson thriller from bestselling crimewriter Philip Kerr.

Britain’s premier thriller writer’s new book is an edge of the seat ride through a richly imagined America; a country riven by fear and distrust. It is a world where the FBI and the CIA fight a barely restrained turf war. where gangsters mix with the brightest stars of Hollywood and where there is a price on everyone’s head.

November 1960. Against the odds a 43 year old Roman Catholic has beaten Richard Nixon in the presidential race and John F. Kennedy will be the first new President of the decade. It is an uneasy time. The Cold War is close to boiling over, the Soviet Union is matching America in the arms race and has beaten her into space. Anti-Communist fever is rampant and paranoia about Castro’s Cuba is running high.

For the Mafia, keen to free up their operations in the Caribbean. Castro presents a different sort of problem but a real one nevertheless; so they employ Tom Jefferson. America’s most efficient assassin, to kill him. But Jefferson has his own agenda, his own target, much closer to home. If he succeeds he will change history. And no

A beautiful actress, a rising star of the giant German film company UFA, now controlled by the Propaganda Ministry. The very clever, very dangerous Propaganda Minister — close confidant of Hitler, an ambitious schemer and flagrant libertine. And Bernie Gunther, former Berlin homicide bull, now forced to do favors for Joseph Goebbels at the Propaganda Minister’s command.

This time, the favor is personal. And this time, nothing is what it seems.

Set down amid the killing fields of Ustashe-controlled Croatia, Bernie finds himself in a world of mindless brutality where everyone has a hidden agenda. Perfect territory for a true cynic whose instinct is to trust no one.

It’s 1956 and Bernie Gunther is on the run. Ordered by Erich Mielke, deputy head of the East German Stasi, to murder Bernie’s former lover by thallium poisoning, he finds his conscience is stronger than his desire not to be murdered in turn. Now he must stay one step ahead of Mielke’s retribution.

The man Mielke has sent to hunt him is an ex-Kripo colleague, and as Bernie pushes towards Germany he recalls their last case together. In 1939, Bernie was summoned by Reinhard Heydrich to the Berghof: Hitler’s mountain home in Obersalzberg. A low-level German bureaucrat had been murdered, and the Reichstag deputy Martin Bormann, in charge of overseeing renovations to the Berghof, wants the case solved quickly. If the Fuhrer were ever to find out that his own house had been the scene of a recent murder — the consequences wouldn’t bear thinking about.

And so begins perhaps the strangest of Bernie Gunther’s adventures, for although several countries and seventeen years separate the murder at the Berghof from his current predicament, Bernie will find there is some unfinished business awaiting him in Germany.

Everyone knows football is a matter of life and death.

But this time, it's murder.

Scot Manson: team coach for London City FC and all-round fixer for the lads. Players love him, bosses trust him.

But now the team's manager has been found dead at their home stadium.

Even Scott can't smooth over murder... but can he catch the killer before he strikes again?

A woman is found dead, raped and covered obscene graffiti. This is unremarkable; London is a world of elaborate technology, violence and squalor, and serial murder has reached epidemic proportions. A new killer emerges, however, who has other targets, ones which have alarming consequences for the government. Chief Inspector ‘Jake’ Jakowicz is put in charge of the investigation, which will require all her powers of reason and intuition.

There has been a breach in the security of the Lombroso computer system, which screens people for their predisposition to violent criminality. Aided by Chung, a computer expert, and Dr Jameson Lang, Professor of Philosophy at Cambridge University, Jake begins to build a profile of a criminal mind that has adopted the name (and the thought processes) of one of the world’s greatest thinkers. In an age where faith is lost and reality is mutable, logic has become the killers driving force. His voice emerges: sharp, engaging and dismayingly rational. ‘The concept of killing: the assertion of one’s own being by the denial of another. Self-creation by annihilation.’ His name is ‘Wittgenstein’. A chilling philosophical dialogue ensues between Jake and the murderer, where concepts of meaning, logic, and of consciousness are endowed with the importance of life and death.

A Philosophical Investigation 

The rolling strip across the bottom of the screen shouts the news:

BESTSELLING NOVELIST JOHN HOUSTON’S WIFE FOUND MURDERED AT THEIR LUXURY APARTMENT IN MONACO.

Houston is the richest writer in the world, a book factory publishing many bestsellers a year — so many that he can’t possibly write them himself. He has a team that feeds off his talent; ghost writers, agents, publishers. So when he decides to take a year out to write something of quality, a novel that will win prizes and critical acclaim, a lot of people stand to lose their livelihoods.

Now Houston, the prime suspect in his wife’s murder, has disappeared. He owns a boat and has a pilot’s licence — he could be anywhere and there are many who’d like to find him.

First there’s the police. If he’s innocent, why did he flee? Then again, maybe he was set up by one of his enemies. The scenario reads like the plot of one of Houston’s million-copy-selling thrillers...

1696, young Christopher Ellis is sent to the Tower of London, but not as a prisoner. Though Ellis is notoriously hotheaded and was caught fighting an illegal duel, he arrives at the Tower as assistant to the renowned scientist Sir Isaac Newton. Newton is Warden of the Royal Mint, which resides within the Tower walls, and he has accepted an appointment from the King of England and Parliament to investigate and prosecute counterfeiters whose false coins threaten to bring down the shaky, war-weakened economy. Ellis may lack Newton’s scholarly mind, but he is quick with a pistol and proves himself to be an invaluable sidekick and devoted apprentice to Newton as they zealously pursue these criminals.

While Newton and Ellis investigate a counterfeiting ring, they come upon a mysterious coded message on the body of a man killed in the Lion Tower, as well as alchemical symbols that indicate this was more than just a random murder. Despite Newton’s formidable intellect, he is unable to decipher the cryptic message or any of the others he and Ellis find as the body count increases within the Tower complex. As they are drawn into a wild pursuit of the counterfeiters that takes them from the madhouse of Bedlam to the squalid confines of Newgate prison and back to the Tower itself, Newton and Ellis discover that the counterfeiting is only a small part of a larger, more dangerous plot, one that reaches to the highest echelons of power and nobility and threatens much more than the collapse of the economy.

JUST BECAUSE FOOTBALL’S A GAME, DOESN’T MEAN YOU HAVE TO PLAY FAIR.

Scott Manson needs to leave England. His career managing London City football team is over, and it cuts deep to watch them play on without him.

But finding a job in the star-studded world of international football is harder than it looks. A new position in Shanghai turns out to be part of an elaborate sting operation. And in Barcelona, he’s hired not as a football manager, but as a detective. Barca’s star player is missing, and they need to find him fast.

Scott has a month to track him down. As he follows the trail from Paris to Antigua, he encounters corrupt men, wicked women, and the rotten core of the beautiful game...

An omnibus of novels

These three mysteries are exciting and insightful looks at life inside Nazi Germany – richer and more readable than most histories of the period. We first meet ex-policeman Bernie Gunther in 1936, in March Violets (a term of derision which original Nazis used to describe late converts.) The Olympic Games are about to start; some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realize that they should have left while they could; and Gunther himself has been hired to look into two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party. In The Pale Criminal, it's 1938, and Gunther has been blackmailed into rejoining the police by Heydrich himself. And in A German Requiem, the saddest and most disturbing of the three books, it's 1947 as Gunther stumbles across a nightmare landscape that conceals even more death than he imagines.

En la ciudad de Los Angeles se inaugura un modernísimo rascacielos in-formatizado regido por un superordenador al que han puesto el nombre de Abraham. De pronto, en el edificio se empiezan a producir extrañas muertes -primero un técnico informático, después un guarda de seguridad…- que la policía no sabe si catalogar como accidentes o asesinatos. Los dos principales sospechosos son el estudiante que encabeza las manifestaciones contra el propietario de la constructora, un multimillonario de origen chino simpatizante del Gobierno comunista de Pekín, y uno de los técnicos del equipo del arquitecto responsable del proyecto, que se ha peleado con él. Otra posible explicación es que el edificio, según las teorías de una empresa en embrujos tradicionales chinos, está maldito. Pero acaso el verdadero culpable no sea humano ni tenga nada que ver con antiguas brujerías… Philip Kerr ha escrito un apasionante tecno-thriller protagonizado por un superordenador capaz de poner en jaque a policías, arquitectos y técnicos informáticos. Como el Hal de 2001: Una odisea en el espacio, Abraham no está dispuesto a limitarse a cumplir órdenes…

Jack Furness, a world-famous mountaineer, is scaling one of the highest peaks in Nepal when he slips and falls into a crevasse. In the snow he finds a fragment of skull preserved in almost immaculate condition, and on returning home presents it to his ex-girlfriend, Dr. Stella Swift, a paleoanthropologist at Berkeley. Stella is intrigued. The skull, when she examines it, seems to be a rare example of an early hominid, a form of ape-man which science had yet to classify. She also discovers that the skull is not millions of years old, but alarmingly recent.

Stella and Jack set about organising a new expedition to the Himalayas, to rediscover more of the fossil material, and maybe even to track down a living example of this strange creature. But they have problems: there are threats of a nuclear war, and there is a narrow gap of time in which they can make their trip safety. And Jack becomes quickly aware that one member of their team may have a secret mission that may conflict with their own.

The story of expedition, and of what Stella and her team find there, make Esau one of the most heart-stoppingly exciting thrillers of recent years.

Berlín 1947. Tras la derrota de la Alemania Nazi en la II Guerra Mundial Bernie Gunther,sobrevive como detective privado en una dura postguerra en que los berlineses se encuentran atemorizados por la represión que sufren por parte de las tropas soviéticas (el Ejército Rojo) sobre todo en la llamada Zona Este de la ciudad. Gunther luchó en el frente ruso y pasó una temporada en un campo de concentración soviético antes de poder regresar a Berlín con 15 kilos menos de peso y una ligera cojera como recuerdo.

En Réquiem Alemán Bernie Gunther recibe el encargo por parte de un coronel de la inteligencia soviética de investigar el caso de Emil Becker, un amigo común antiguo compañero de Gunther en la policía criminal (la Kripo). Becker, que después de la guerra controlaba parte del mercado negro en la ciudad austríaca de Viena, ha sido detenido por los estadounidenses acusado del asesinato de uno de los suyos. Pero Becker se declara inocente y reclama a Gunther como el único hombre en que confía para demostrar la verdad. Pero para conseguir la verdad, Gunther deberá sumergirse en las luchas secretas entre los distintos servicios de inteligencia aliados en lo que fueron los inicios de la llamada Guerra Fría.

En Pálido Criminal Bernie Gunther, pese a su nula simpatía por los nazis, es obligado por el general de las SS Reinhard Heydrich a reincorporarse a la Kripo con la misión de dar caza a un psicópata que ha violado, torturado y asesinado a varias adolescentes arias. Bajo el mando de su amigo el Kriminaldirektor Arthur Nebe y con el grado de Comisario, Gunther regresa a una policía cada vez más cercana a la Gestapo e inicia una investigación contrarreloj para evitar que el asesino siga matando. Pero la investigación se complicará cuando en la misma se vean involucrados varios miembros relevantes de las SS interesados por el ocultismo que tienen un especial odio a los judíos, como Otto Rahn, Karl Maria Wiligut o el mismísimo Heinrich Himmler.

Transcurre el año 1949. Harto de ocuparse del hotel de su suegro situado a un paso del campo de concentración de Dachau, en Alemania, y con su esposa ingresada en una institución mental, el sardónico detective Bernhard Gunther ha decidido ir tras los pasos de un famoso sádico, uno de los muchos espías de las SS capaz de infiltrarse entrelas filas de los aliados y encontrar refugio en América. Pero, por supuesto, nada es lo que parece, y Gunther pronto se encontrará navegando en un mar mortal habitado por ex-nazis que huyen de la persecución y de organizaciones secretas constituidas con el objetivo de facilitar la huída a los verdugos del tercer Reich.

Corre el año 1954 y las cosas no son sencillas para Bernie Gunther. El Gobierno cubano le ha obligado a espiar a Meyer Lansky, y cualquiera puede imaginarse que meter las narices en los asuntos de un conocido mafioso no puede ser bueno para la salud. Así que, harto de ese engorroso trabajo, Gunther consigue una embarcación con el objetivo de huir a Florida. Sin embargo, la suerte no está de su lado, ya que tras la fuga es arrestado y devuelto a Cuba, donde es encarcelado. En su estancia en prisión conoce a personajes curiosos, como Fidel Castro o Thibaud, un agente que ejerce de enlace entre la CIA y el servicio de inteligencia francés. Thibaud no es buena compañía para Bernie y no tarda en demostrarlo al hacerle una propuesta que el detective no tiene más remedio que aceptar: debe volver a Alemania para alojarse en una prisión y hacer allí un trabajo sucio que puede acabar costándole la vida.

Dave Delano conoce la libertad después de cinco años alojado a costa del estado. Un alojamiento que ha merecido por encubrir a un apreciado mafioso de Florida, Tony Nudelli, al cual, desde luego, no le hace ninguna ilusión la liberación de Delano: después de cinco años a la sombra, uno puede volverse un tanto vengativo…

Pero el ex preso viene con las mejores intenciones. De hecho, propone a Nudelli un plan para hacerse en alta mar con un fabuloso envío de dinero -negro, por supuesto- que va a remitirse a Rusia. Una cantidad que arreglaría la vida de los más exigentes. La que también quiere cambiar su vida es Kate Furey, agente del FBI destinada en Miami, que ha detectado un cargamento de cocaína que va a ser enviado a Europa. Interceptarlo significa para Kate no sólo un éxito profesional sino, sobre todo, escapar de la rutina de un trabajo burocrático.

Un año después de abandonar la Kripo, la Policía Criminal alemana, Bernie Gunther trabaja en el Hotel Adlon, en donde se aloja la periodista norteamericana Noreen Charalambides, que ha llegado a Berlín para investigar el creciente fervor antijudío y la sospechosa designación de la ciudad como sede de los Juegos Olímpicos de 1936. Noreen y Gunther se aliarán dentro y fuera de la cama seguirle la pista a una trama que une las altas esferas del nazismo con el crimen organizado estadounidense. Un chantaje, doble y calculado, les hará renunciar a destapar la miseria y los asesinatos, pero no al amor. Sin embargo, Noreen es obligada a volver a Estados Unidos, y Gunther ve cómo, otra vez, una mujer se pierde en las sombras. Hasta que veinte años después, ambos se reencuentran en la insurgente Habana de Batista. Pero los fantasmas nunca viajan solos.

Vuelve Bernie Gunther. Huyendo de una absurda acusación de criminal de guerra, dejará Berlín con destino a Buenos Aires. Es 1950 y su destino no es casual: una muchacha ha sido asesinada de forma espantosa al otro lado del Atlántico y el modus operandi lo enlaza con otro semejante en los últimos días de la República de Weimar. Y Gunther nunca se rinde.

Philip Kerr nos vuelve a proporcionar un thriller poderoso e irresistible, trasladándonos de la Alemania nazi a la convulsa Argentina de 1950.

La primera vez que conocemos al ex policía Bernie Gunther la acción se sitúa en 1936, en Violetas de Marzo (un eufemismo que usaron los primeros nazis para describir los últimos conversos), cuando los Juegos Olímpicos están a punto de empezar.

Algunos de los amigos judíos de Bernie se van dando cuenta de que tendrían que haber huido cuando aún podían hacerlo, y Gunther recibe el encargo de investigar dos muertes que afectan a los máximos cargos del partido nazi. El antiguo policía Bernie Gunther creía que ya lo había visto todo en las calles de Berlín de los años treinta. Pero cuando dejó el cuerpo para convertirse en detective privado, cada nuevo caso lo iba hundiendo un poco más en los horribles excesos de la subcultura nazi. Después de la guerra, en medio del esplendor imperial y decadente de Viena, Bernie incluso llega a poner al descubierto un legado que, en comparación, convierte las atrocidades cometidas enépoca de guerra en un juego de niños…