Berlin Noir: WITH March Violets (Penguin Crime/Mystery)

I'm not a huge fan of detective or crime stories. I've read a few of the modern crop. Starring world weary cops/forensic pathologists/police photographers etc who are so much better than their incompetent colleagues, yet drink like fishes at a curry contest and get off with every woman they meet. John Actor plays Monkfish etc. Yawn. But a detective in Nazi Germany? That sounded interesting: historically intriguing, and ethically too. A policeman floundering in a corrupt society, full of the echoes of history.

Unfortunately, what I found were all the usual clichés, plus a lot worse. Unreal dialogue, plentiful name-dropping: oh yes, and a low ranking detective who talks back to the likes of Heydrich, Himmler, and Göring.

Dialogue is often nonsensical. Like when Bernie agrees with Heydrich not to humiliate Himmler in front of his SS subordinates - and then goes on to do just that. Plot devices are daft too: Bernie begs an armed assassin to shoot him in the head, not the stomach, as it'll save him a lot of pain (and thereby impresses us with Bernie's knowledge of the foibles of certain WWI era firearms). As if the assassin would give a damn. Talk about a crow-bar plot.

Furthermore, there's an unpleasant tendency towards misogyny in these books. They glory in it. Admittedly men are killed in the stories, too. But Kerr seems rather hung up on plotlines involving the graphic torture and mutilation of women. I think it's just a tad sick that all three of these books recycle the same misogynistic theme. But that's just me I guess, eh?

And the final story: German Requiem. A cringe-inducing knock-off of The Third Man (though Kerr seems to be under the impression that it's his work that is the better of the two). Apparently German Requiem is about a `scandal that makes the wartime atrocities pale in comparison'. All I can say is the atrocities committed by both sides during the war were rather more shocking than Kerr's petty storyline.

You want a real feel for history then read Len Deighton's masterful spy series: Game, Set, and Match; Hook, Line and Sinker; and Faith, Hope, and Charity; Winter: A Berlin Family 1899-1945. They positively drip the stuff. History, that is.

And then read Bomber.

Highly recommendable :) (1/1 people found this helpful)

I can highly recommend anyone who is interested in German and European history and want to have a interesting read at the same time.

I am at the same time an amateur expert on the period, and I have not found a single historical or geographical mistake, which is not the case with Alan Fursts "Night Soldiers", which I have also reviewed on this site.

All the Berlin Noir stories should be made into films :))

forgton your German history? (1/1 people found this helpful)

Supberb triple thirllers,If you have forgoten your german history 1937 onwards.This three books will remind you. Wonderfull detective stories interwoven with true facts from that terrible era from before ,during and after the second world war. Brillant read for teenagers or uni students that dont know much about this time, it might just show them genocide is not just a modern subject. Waiting on amazon delivering the next in the series so as to read them in order. Hurry up amazon.
Peter Anderson Milton of Campsie Scotland

A German Sam Spade (10/10 people found this helpful)

Bernie Gunther is an ex Kripo (German CID) officer working as a private detective in pre and post war Berlin. He is tough, cynical and wisecraking, but also honest and decent. In fact he is Sam Spade/Philip Marlowe transplaned from California to Germany. Bernie's job brings him into contact with historical figures like Himmler, Goering and Artur Nebe, the real life wartime head of the German Kripo.

Philip Kerr is one of those writers who can transplant you into a different world, in this case pre and post war Germany. In doing so he has created a number of slang terms which I do not know if they are real German slang but it does not matter as they sound right.

Berlin Noir contains three out of four Bernie Gunther novels, March Violets, The Pale Criminal and German Requiem. The first of these also concerns the German Rings who Mafia like controlled crime in pre Nazi Berlin. The Rings were destroyed by more violent criminals, the Nazis.

The Pale Criminal has Bernie recruited back into the Berlin Police in order to catch a serial killer who may be linked to the ruling Nazi Party. German Requiem moves to post war Berlin and Vienna with refences to the Third Man.

All three stand up in their own right and Mr Kerr can be congratulated on coming up with a new idea and for being able to create a milleu as well as being able to plot and write very well indeed.

Bernie Gunther is welcome and different addition to the ranks of fictional dectectives

A knight without armor in a savage land (16/16 people found this helpful)

"A good story cannot be devised it has to be distilled." Raymond Chandler

Raymond Chandler was a master at taking a plot and distilling it into a taut, splendid story. Chandler, along with Dashiell Hammett, pretty much invented the "hard-boiled detective". So, when a writer, in this instance Philip Kerr, comes along who is repeatedly compared to Raymond Chandler comes along, I can't resist seeing for myself. I'm happy I picked up Berlin Noir and, even if Kerr is not quite Chandler, his stories are so well written that he need not be embarrassed by the comparison.

Berlin Noir consists of three Kerr novels, "March Violets", "The Pale Criminal", and "German Requiem". They each feature Kerr's exquisitely drawn detective Bernie Gunther. If you've read Hammett, Cain, or Chandler, Gunther is instantly recognizable. He's a tough ex-cop now working as a private eye. He's bitter and cynical and sees the corruption all around him. He also has an eye for the ladies as well as a taste for booze. But for all his flaws he lives up to a certain code; he knows the world isn't black and white but he has his own moral compass and lives by it - for the most part.

What distinguishes Gunther from Sam Spade or Philip Marlowe is location. Gunther is a German, and instead of Los Angeles, he makes his base in Berlin. The three stories are set in 1936 (March Violets"), 1938 ("Pale Criminal"), and 1947 (the aptly named "German Requiem") against the backdrop of the rise and fall of Hitler's Nazi Germany. He left the Berlin police once the force became nothing more than a tool of the new regime. The time and setting are perfect for a genre in which shades of grey dominate the palette. Gunther is tasked with solving crimes while navigating the Byzantine-maze of inter-party rivalries, many of which are deadly.

I was fascinated by Gunther and the world Kerry paints for him. I usually take a break in between books that are part of a series but I couldn't do that with the three stories in Berlin Noir. They are all well-crafted and suspenseful. Although Kerr is clearing paying homage to his genre the stories are original and not generic. In other words Kerr is not the literary equivalent of an Elvis-impersonator. He has written these stories within the confines of a genre but has not sacrificed his own voice. The plots are complex but not so complex that they cannot be followed. With each story the personality of Gunther becomes a bit clearer so that by the time the reader is finished with them, Gunther is really a fully-formed and very believable character.

Kerr has just published a new Bernie Gunther novel entitled "The One from the Other". I am about one third of the way through it. It is an excellent sequel made all the more enjoyable by having read "Berlin Noir". Highly recommended. L. Fleisig

Berlin Noir: WITH March Violets (Penguin Crime/Mystery)

Philip Kerr

Reader Reviews:

Serial misogynist? (0/1 people found this helpful)

Highly recommendable :) (1/1 people found this helpful)

forgton your German history? (1/1 people found this helpful)

A German Sam Spade (10/10 people found this helpful)

A knight without armor in a savage land (16/16 people found this helpful)

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