Author: Philip Kerr
Publisher: Penguin Books
First published: 1989 – 1991
Setting: Berlin, Germany and Vienna, Austria
Read in October 2013
My Rating ★★★★ 4.0
“Introducing Bernie Gunther, Poirot’s antithesis”
This is the omnibus edition of the first three Bernie Gunther books written 20+ years ago. For fans (I am a fan) and first timers this will not disappoint. In the first two books of this set Bernie is the sardonic private investigator living dangerously in pre-war Nazi run Berlin. The third book is pitched in Cold War post Nuremberg trials Vienna where unsavoury alliances are the backdrop to the new enemy of communism.If you have not been introduced to Bernie before, there is no better place to try him than at the beginning.
Book 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.
The Diary of a Digital Nobody 