'Bernie Gunther - sly,subversive,sardonic,and occasionally hilarious - is one of the greatest anti-heroes ever written. We're in good hands here.'- Lee Child
Ex-Policeman Bernie Gunther 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 . . .
Set before,during and after Hitler's rise to power,the three novels contained in Berlin Noir:March Violets;The Pale Criminal; A German Requiemtook the private investigator archetype perfected by Hammett and Chandler and dragged them to all-new depths of morbid compromise,all the while delivering eye-watering one-liners and observations on the human condition
When we first meet Bernie in March Violets he is 38 years old,a veteran of the Turkish Front (like Hitler,winning a Second-Class Iron Cross,but,as he says,"most of the first-class medals were awarded to men in cemeteries"),and an ex-policeman. He's also a private eye,specializing in missing persons. He's a very busy man. Because this is Berlin 1936,and people have a nasty habit of disappearing in Hitler's capital.
Read an exclusive introduction to book twelve in the Gunther series,Prussian Blue,by Philip Kerr.
The thirteenthBernie Gunther series novel,Greeks Bearing Gifts, is published April 2018 and is available to order now.
Publisher: Penguin Books LtdISBN: 9780241962350Number of pages: 880Weight: 596 gDimensions: 198 x 129 x 37 mm
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'Bernie Gunther - sly,subversive,sardonic,and occasionally hilarious - is one of the greatest anti-heroes ever written... We're in good hands here.'- Lee Child
Philip Kerr
Since the late eighties,Philip Kerr had been redefining crime fiction with his justly-lauded Bernie Gunther sequence. The original trilogy -March Violets,The Pale CriminalandA German Requiem,available also as a stand-alone collectionBerlin Noir- is considered one of the great highpoints of crime literature. After a break of some fifteen years,Kerr resurrected Gunther for a storming sequence of novels,set before,during and after WWII,fully fleshing out this dark,conspiratorial universe into one of fiction's great story arcs. Just before he died Philip Kerr finished a fourteenth Bernie Gunther novel Metropolis,which will be published next year. Kerr also wrote a number of stand alone thrillers and children's books during a prolific career.
Visit the Philip Kerr author page
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