Gently at the Viennese Hotel (on the English Coast)
Review of the Constable Kindle eBook edition (2012) of the Cassell Crime hardcover original (1967).

They are in the presence of a manner of hero. One whose occupation is with death, with many deaths, with death in terror. They stare at Gently, this modern hero, this man who opens up mysteries, whose strong hands, casually filling a pipe, have ripped the veil from many a dying: who has seen what they pray not to see, has dealt with men they pray not to deal with: makes, as vocation, a common thing, what most men fear and turn aside from: at him they stare, a modern hero, a man who occupies himself with death. And he unthinkingly stares back, seeing the straw he will make his bricks with, mindlessly noting a thousand things as he tells the reporters precisely nothing, quite unaware within himself of the projection of a heroic image, which he would immediately know to be false, though it would reveal to him much about those who perceived it. He stares, and eyes fall, though his stare is a mild one. His stare has no penetration, yet it seems to lay one open.

As I've learned during this deep dive of Alan Hunter's George Gently novels, he changes styles and methods with each outing. Some of the books insert Gently into a cultural milieu where the dialogue of the witnesses and suspects can be in 60s beatnik lingo, in Scottish dialect, in Caribbean dialect, etc. For Gently Continental, Gently investigates the death of a vacationer at an English seaside resort which is run by an Austrian family of refugees from the time of the Second World War. They have built up the hotel through an inheritance and through hard work. Often their dialogue is in untranslated German, although the sentences are short and usually easy to understand.

The victim was tortured prior to his death, but met his end by fatally falling or jumping off a seaside cliff onto ruined debris below. The identity of the supposed Irish-American victim seems obvious at first, but soon a false identity is revealed with a mysterious origin and connections. The family and hotel staff are all under suspicion. In one of his stylistic changes, Hunter writes all of the suspect interrogations as if they were a playscript (or as if they were a police stenographer's transcription).

Gently: I want you to tell me, Mrs Breske, everything you remember about the deceased.
Mrs Breske: But there is nothing! He is here six, seven weeks, and I do not speak to him more than twice.
Gently: Did he have an accent?
Mrs Breske: Ach, yes. He came from America, is true. He has that slur, you know, and he speaks through his nose. I, myself, have met many Americans. During the War I was in London. This one, yes, he is like the others, indeed, is certain.
Gently: He had a strong accent?
Mrs Breske: Oh, ja.
Gently: Perhaps a little too strong?

See cover image at https://images-na.ssl-images-amazon.com/images/S/compressed.photo.goodreads.com/...
The dust cover of the original UK hardcover published by Cassell Crime in 1967. Image sourced from Goodreads.

The bulk of the rest of the text is in exaggerated purple prose like that of Gently's portrait above or in the aftermath of his revelations to his police colleagues below. I'm continuing to enjoy these Alan Hunter novels as my current favourite light reading in between other works.

Shelton is silent. He is overwhelmed. He has never before met this level of intelligence. He feels like a child with a hideous algebraic problem, whose despair is resolved by the huge wisdom of an adult. He had no key, it was impossible; the key is provided, all is plain. At a single blow Gently has smashed the impasse, shown how the terms fall into place. All, that Shelton had stared at so hard, is suddenly, without violence, coherent and related.

Sidenote
There is no mention of Gently's girlfriend/partner Brenda Merryn in this book and one might suspect that Gently's leading her into danger in the previous book Gently North-West (Gently #14 - 1967) might have caused a breakup. In fact she is mentioned again a few books later, although without an appearance.

Trivia and Link
Gently Continental was not adapted for the Inspector George Gently TV series (2007-2017). Very few of the TV episodes are based on the original books and the characters are quite different e.g. Sgt Bacchus does not appear in the books. The timeline for the TV series takes place in the 1960s only. ( )