Berlin Noir - Philip Kerr

Author: Philip Kerr

Publisher: Penguin Books

First published:1989 - 1991

Setting: Berlin, Germany and Vienna, Austria
Read in October 2013

My Rating ★★★★  4.0

My Waterstones Review

The first three books featuring Philip Kerr's sardonic detective Bernhard "Bernie" Gunther was brought together as an omnibus edition in 1993 under the title of Berlin Noir.

March Violets

In the run-up to Berlin's 1936 summer Olympics Bernie is working as a private investigator and is engaged by a steel millionaire Herr Doktor Hermann Six to investigate the disappearance of jewels and a diamond necklace of over 100 carets; 3 nights before his daughter Grete and husband Paul Pfarr had been murdered, shot, the safe opened and house set alight.

Bernie is a single 38 year old ex-policeman, decorated with an Iron Cross second class, but life outside of the Nazi regime is hazardous and missing persons aren't always found at the morgue. Philip builds a convincing picture of Berlin at this time, seedy and violent, and of our hero a likeable character with featured face, presumably attractive to women, and who drinks and smokes in abundance.

The Pale Criminal

In the prelude to the second world war with Europe hanging on to peace Bernie is hired by a rich widow on a case of blackmail. But there is a serial killer on the streets and Bernie's infamous arrest of Gormann the Strangler 10 years previously will return him to Kripo, the Berlin criminal police, an uncomfortable position for a non-Nazi on a high profile case.

A German Requiem

The slightly longer third book takes us to post war Vienna and to the winter of 1947, this is post Nuremberg trials. Hired by a Russian colonel to investigate the circumstances behind a murder that has placed an ex-Kripo colleague, Emil Becker, in jail awaiting trial, Bernie finds a Cold War Vienna a world apart from his ravaged home town of Berlin. The murder of an American Nazi hunter does not have the Becker hallmark, a prolific black-marketer. Communism is the new enemy and unsavoury alliances are being built, who should Bernie trust and will he unravel the mystery in time to save Becker?

It will be another 16 years before Philip Kerr resurrects Bernie for his fans, another 6 adventures have followed.

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in co
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#x5DtKwheqvBtRTPc.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#5JRXRhlAXGH8PGIK.99

Ex-Policeman Bernie Günther thought he'd seen everything on the streets of 1930's Berlin. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi sub-culture. And even after the war, amidst the decayed, imperial splendour of Vienna, Bernie uncovered a legacy that made the wartime atrocities look lily-white in comparison . . .
Read more at http://www.penguin.co.uk/nf/Book/BookDisplay/0,,9780241962350,00.html#5JRXRhlAXGH8PGIK.99