Berlin Noir: March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther, 1-3)

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But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of the Nazi regime. As a reader I was constantly being thrown out of the story by Kerr’s clumsy and overwrought metaphors. We use Google Analytics to see what pages are most visited, and where in the world visitors are visiting from.

However, this bit of authorial insecurity is not yet the low point in the series, as the previously tacit cliché of "the shoddy little man in the barely furnished office, who drinks like a suicide who's lost his nerve, and who comes to the assistance of the beautiful but mysterious woman in black" is explicitly written into the text on page 220. For quite a while I pored over the text, turning the pages with my fingers and feasting my eyes on what I had never dreamed of possessing (pp.Before Bernie leaves, a high-ranking Gestapo officer corrals him into using the trip as an opportunity to gather evidence on the criminal activities of the SD officer who arranged the trip in the first place. Although the titles are not all on the same imprint (I have Berlin Noir and The One From the Other in trade paper, the other two in cloth), the series as a whole has a very consistent look in terms of title typeface, layout and cover design.

I had fallen into Philip Kerr by way of his Wittgenstein-inspired bit of serial killer detective sci fi, A Philosophical Investigation. Every time we’re afraid we’ve seen the last of Bernie Gunther, Philip Kerr comes through with another unnerving adventure for his morally conflicted hero.Kerr also avoids relying on cheap shtick that curses many neo-noirs, the cheap glamour and romance used to portray this era, and the moral simplification that boils the Nazi era down black and white hats, villain and hero. They are also a lot of fun with plenty of wisecracks and knowing cultural references(Third Man and Casablanca among the allusions), but for those in love with neat, puzzle like mysteries and happy endings need to travel elsewhere as these are grim. Philip Kerr is the New York Times bestselling author of the acclaimed Bernie Gunther novels, three of which—Field Gray, The Lady from Zagreb, and Prussian Blue—were finalists for the Edgar® Award for Best Novel. One thing the books illustrate is the extent to which Nazism was a kleptocracy, in which anyone with a bit of power stole from stigmatized groups: Jews, of course, but really anyone who was not a staunch Nazi.

Since the late eighties, Philip Kerr had been redefining crime fiction with his justly-lauded Bernie Gunther sequence.

The first book take place in 1936: Hitler is on the rise, people like him, there are some weird laws, Jewish people are slowly trying to flee the country. In one big paperback you get the complete Berlin trilogy: March Violets; The Pale Criminal and A German Requiem.