Kerr may be the most skilled of Philip Marlowe's heirs, evoking Chandler's metaphoric, wise-cracking style without descending into pastiche. But Kerr's debt to Chandler is largely stylistic. While Chandler romanticized Marlowe as an idealized father figure, Kerr's darkly complex Gunther skins the onion of Nazi-era Germany as finely as Walter Mosley’s Easy Rawlins peels back the layers of L.A.'s Watts ghetto.

The One From The Other finds Gunther a Dachau hotelier in 1949. The idea of this cynical, brooding detective eking out a living in the hospitality industry is a joke as thinly veiled as the view of the former concentration camp a stone’s-throw from the inn he runs with his wife, but somehow it has allowed them to survive to this point.

A series of unrelated events give the former detective the opportunity to re-establish himself. He opens an agency in nearby Munich and quickly finds there's ample cash and work for sorting through the confusion of former Nazis fleeing trial by the Allies, or outright execution at the hands of Jewish agents. The lucky ones, those with useful information and experience, are sheltered into the scientific research programs of their former enemies, while others scurry to link with networks of war-time comrades who will help sneak them out of the country. It's a spies-nest, filled with links and cross-purposes that further corrupt splintering Occupied Germany administrations and the friendly authorities they rely upon.

As Gunther gradually links his varied cases into an elaborate, paranoid escape-plot, he is confronted with memories of his own war experiences. He must separate the parchment-thin differences between himself and those who manipulate him, from the essential hypocrisies that allow his fellow German citizens to get on with their lives. It’s the constant struggle to distinguish The One From The Other.