Philip Kerr set out to pen a trilogy about World War II-era Berlin cop turned private eye Bernie Gunther, beginning with March Violets (1989). But he’s now up to five volumes. In the newest, A Quiet Flame (Putnam, $26.95), Gunther poses as a Nazi war criminal and escapes to Buenos Aires, Argentina, in 1950. Everywhere he goes in South America’s most European city, he seems to come across some former Hitler henchman, now living behind an assumed name and innocent occupation, benefiting from President Juan Perón’s interest in permanently retired Nazis — and their ill-gotten gains. Gunther might have liked to disappear, too. But instead he’s called on by the local chief of police, who knows something of his sordid background, to help investigate the gruesome slaying of a young girl — a case that bears similarities to another, unsolved homicide that Gunther worked on during his police days. The story offers lots of flashbacks, placing a more hopeful Gunther in the wild Berlin of 1932, where he delves into the “lust murder” of Anita Schwarz, a disabled part-time prostitute. Kerr does an excellent job of bringing to life such characters as Perón and his wife, Eva, as well as Adolf Eichmann and Otto Skorzeny. And he mixes them with winning fictional figures, notably Anna Yagubsky, a fetching young Jewish woman who wants the older Gunther’s help in finding her lost relatives, and in return assists him in the Schwarz probe, no matter the dangers involved — or the bed sheets they must tangle along the way. Questions about Argentina’s collaboration with the Nazis and its anti-Semitism only add further spice to A Quiet Flame. There are just enough loose ends in the last chapter to suggest that Kerr has a sixth Bernie Gunther book in the works. Thank goodness. ~ Jeff Pierce