It is 1956 on the French Riviera. A world-weary Bernie Gunther is working as concierge at the Grand Hotel, living under a false name. Then his past walks through the door in the shape of Harold Hennig, a former captain in the Nazi security service. Bernie never forgets a face, especially when it belongs to a mass murderer who, in 1945, was responsible for the deaths of thousands; among them a woman Bernie loved. Bernie has a score to settle with Hennig…

1957, Munich. Bernie Gunther's latest move sees him working for an insurance company. Sent to Athens to investigate a claim from a fellow German for a ship that has sunk, Bernie takes an instant dislike to the claimant. When he discovers the ship in question once belonged to a Greek Jew deported to Auschwitz, he’s convinced the sinking was no accident. Then the claimant is found dead. Bernie is strong-armed into helping the Greek police with their investigation. Who is behind the murder, and why?

Berlin, 1928, the dying days of the Weimar Republic shortly before Hitler and the Nazis came to power. It was a period of decadence and excess as Berliners - after the terrible slaughter of WWI and the hardships that followed - are enjoying their own version of Babylon. Bernie is a young detective working in Vice when he gets a summons from Bernard Weiss, Chief of Berlin's Criminal Police. He invites Bernie to join KIA - Criminal Inspection A - the supervisory body for all homicide investigation in Kripo.

In 1942,there are worse places to be than Zurich, and detective Bernie Gunther has seen his fair share of them. So when a superior asks him to track down a glamorous German actress believed to be hiding in Zurich, he takes the job. The actress, it emerges, is the daughter of a fanatical Croatian fascist, the sadistic commandant of a notorious concentration camp, and Bernie finds himself involved in something much more sinister.

Berlin, March 1943. The mood in Germany is bleak after their stunning defeat at Stalingrad. Private Investigator Bernie Gunther is at work in the German War Crimes Bureau - weary, cynical but well aware of the value of truth in a world where that's now a rarity. When human remains are found deep in the Katyn Forest, Bernie is sent to investigate. Rumour has it that this mass grave is full of Polish officers murdered by the Russians. For Josef Goebbels, proof of Russian involvement is sure to destroy the Western Alliance, giving Germany a chance to reverse its devastating losses.

September 1941: Bernie Gunther's old boss, Reinhard Heydrich, orders him to Prague to stay at his country house. When a body is found in a room locked from the inside, the spotlight falls on Bernie to solve the mystery. If he fails to do so, he knows what is at stake - the reputation of Heydrich, a man who does not like to lose face. So begins the most diplomatically sensitive case of Bernie Gunther's police career.

Berlin, 1934. The Nazis have been in power for just 18 months but already Germany has seen some unpleasant changes. Forced to resign as a homicide detective, Bernie is now house detective at the famous Adlon Hotel. The discovery of two bodies involves Bernie in the lives of two hotel guests. One is a beautiful journalist intent on persuading America to boycott the Berlin Olympiad; the other is a German-Jewish gangster who plans to use the Olympics to enrich himself.

Posing as an escaping Nazi war criminal, Bernie Gunther, Berlin's hardest-boiled private eye, arrives in Buenos Aires. When he reveals his real identity to the local chief of police, he discovers that his reputation as a detective goes before him. A young girl has been murdered in peculiarly gruesome circumstances that strongly resemble Bernie's final case as a homicide detective.

Munich in 1949 is a place where a private eye can find a lot of not-quite-reputable work. It fills Bernie Gunther with disgust - but it also fills his sorely depleted wallet. Then a woman seeks him out. Her husband has disappeared. She's not looking to get him back - he's a wanted man who ran one of the most vicious concentration camps in Poland. She just wants confirmation that he's dead.

Ex-policeman Bernie Gunther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930s Berlin - until he turned freelance and he is sucked further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. The year is 1936 and Berlin is preparing for the Olympic Games. Some of Bernie's Jewish friends are beginning to realise that they should have left while they could, and Bernie himself has been hired by a wealthy industrialist to investigate two murders that reach high into the Nazi Party.

During a sweltering heat wave in the summer of 1938, the German people anxiously await the outcome of the Munich conference, wondering whether the Fuhrer will plunge Europe into another war. Meanwhile, private investigator Bernie Gunther is hired by a rich widow to find out who has been blackmailing her, as well as by the Berlin criminal police to track down a serial killer. Temporarily promoted to the rank of Kommissar, Gunther sets out to solve the dual mysteries amid the tensions of pre-war.

Autumn 1943. Hitler knows he cannot win the war: now he must find a way to make peace. FDR and Stalin are willing to negotiate; only Churchill refuses to listen. The upcoming Allied Tehran conference will be where the next steps - whatever they are - will be decided. Into this nest of double- and triple-dealing steps Willard Mayer, OSS agent and FDR's envoy to the conference. His job is to secure the peace that the USA and Hitler now crave. The stakes couldn't be higher.

America, 1960. In Washington, DC, John F. Kennedy has just been elected president. In Havana, Fidel Castro has been in office for a year, and with Cold War tensions rapidly heating up and the Soviets leading the space race, the thought of a Communist leader so close to home is already raising American blood pressure. Anti-Communist fever is rampant in the USA, with a paranoid establishment seeing reds under every bed. Nevertheless, the decision to snuff out the threat of Castro by hiring Tom Jefferson, America's best assassin, to kill him comes from an unusual quarter: the Mafia.

Everyone knows football is a matter of life and death. But this time, it's murder. Scott Manson is team coach for London City football club. He's also their all-round fixer - he gets the lads into training, and out of trouble, keeps the wags at bay and the press in his pocket. But now London City manager Joao Zarco is dead, killed at his team's beloved stadium at Silvertown Docks. Even Scott Manson can't smooth over murder... but can he catch the killer before he strikes again?

Europe, 1990. As the US begins to pull out its troops in a tide of isolationism, Britain is torn between its loyalties to the USA and its continental neighbours. In America, a space shuttle crashes on landing, killing all but one of the crew on-board: a British man named Mike Dreyfuss, who will become vilified by the US press and protesters. Halfway across the world, Martin Hepton, an English ground control technician watches as they lose contact with the most advanced satellite in Europe.