Review of A Philosophical Investigation by Philip Kerr (1992, G.P. Putnam)

London, 2013 (at the time of publication, twenty years in the future). Society has become more uneven and unequal with capitalism devouring the state and prison sentences have been replaced by ‘punitive comas’. The Lombroso project uses brain scans to identify men lacking a Ventro Medial Nucleus, who are more likely to commit violent crimes, and places them in an anonymous programme designed to limit their tendencies. Only someone seems to have accessed the secret database and is murdering the men, focusing in particular on those given philosopher names as pseudonyms. Detective Isadora ‘Jake’ Jacowicz is assigned the case. Jake has her own demons related to violent men and she’s determined to track down the killer. But ‘Wittgenstein’ is a smarter than the average killer and she might have found her match. 

Kerr spins the tale out through two intertwined threads, the first the tracking police investigation, the second reproducing the journal entries written by the killer. The procedural elements are inflected with philosophical musings related to crime and punishment, with Jake increasingly questioning the ethics of the criminal justice system. The second apes Wittgenstein’s style and ideas, setting out the logic and reasoning of the killer and reflecting on the crimes committed. The result is a police procedural thriller that is thoroughly saturated with ethical and normative reflection, sometimes to the point of drowning the procedural side of the story. The issues raised are thought-provoking, but at times they seem forced centre stage, especially through the use of Wittgenstein’s notebook, and the tale feels too clever for its own good. As a result, while I found many of the ideas underpinning the book interesting, and it was quite an engaging read, it seemed a little too contrived and stilted.

 

Review of Dead Meat by Philip Kerr (1993, Vintage)

After the collapse of the Soviet empire various mafia factions have moved to control economic activities. Business owners kowtow and government officials and the police are easily bought. A Moscow investigator travels to St Petersburg to discover if a special investigations police unit is corrupt. The unit is headed up by Grushko, a tough, street smart and wily cop who appears to be straight. The investigator is quickly enrolled into two cases, the firebombing of a local restaurant and the murders of a journal who specialist in uncovering scandals and a Georgian mafia member. The mafia seem at the heart of both and rival factions appear primed for a turf war. As Grushko and his team start to investigate it’s clear that whatever scandal the journalist was working on seems key, though nobody connected to the case seems to know what it was.

Dead Meat is a police procedural set in St Petersburg in 1993. The shortages of the Soviet era persist, but now the mafia control key goods not the state and prices are extortionate. Grushko heads up a special unit that tackles mafia crime, but such is the level of corruption in the police that he and his team is not above suspicion. A special investigator from Moscow is sent to provide an assessment under the guise of learning by being embedded into the team. He quickly finds himself actively working on mafia related cases, including the murder of a high profile journalist. Told in a hardboiled style and using plenty of local slang, Dead Meat charts Grushko’s investigation and the how his team are assessed in turn. The tale is relatively straightforward, but plot is engaging and lively. In particular, Kerr does a nice job of evoking the city and Russia in the aftermath of the Soviet Union, and the politics and workings of the police, and there’s an interesting set of characters.

Review of Metropolis by Philip Kerr (2019, Quercus)

Berlin, 1928. Germany is still trying to recover from the bloodshed and crippling penalties of the First World War, the Weimar Republic is at its decadent height, the Nazis are starting to gain political influence and power, and anti-Semitism is on the rise. Bernie Gunther has been promoted from vice to the Kripo murder squad. His first task is to review the Silesian Station killings in which four prostitutes are murdered and scalped in quick succession. He’s barely acquainted himself with the case when a fifth murder takes place, the victim the daughter of one the city's criminal king-pins who wants to administer his own justice. Then a second set of murders start targeting crippled war veterans who beg on the city streets. Bernie has a theory that the two sets of murders are linked, but his two bosses are unconvinced. He's never one to shy away from a hunch, however, and is determined to solve the cases even if that means taking a path that deviates from the straight and narrow.

Metropolis is the 14th and final book in the Bernie Gunther series, and the last by Philip Kerr who died of cancer last year. I’ve been caught between wanting to jump in and not wanting the series to end, having read the initial trilogy twenty years or so ago, but last week took the plunge. This outing takes the reader back to Bernie’s first case as a member of the murder squad in 1928 and his attempt to solve two sets of murders, one targeting prostitutes and the other crippled war veterans. Bernie’s first wife is already dead, he’s living in a boarding house, and his somewhat wonky moral compass and cynicism are already in place, though his perspective shifts somewhat in the book from a fatalism to looking out for oneself to get by. It’s a view he adopts over the next thirty years as he tries to survive a murderous regime and its aftermath. Unlike some of the other books that span years, this outing is a relatively straightforward, self-contained police procedural. As usual, Kerr drops in a number of well-known historical figures in the police and movies, and peppers the story with historical facts and a good sense of place and time. And Bernie stoically tracks down clues and takes his own path to get to the truth. A fitting end to an excellent series, with a charismatic, anti-hero lead character who lived a life full of twists and turns that rarely went well, despite him trying roughly to do the right thing. I’ll no doubt revisit the early books in the coming years.

Review of Greeks Bearing Gifts by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2018)

1957, Munich. Bernie Gunther is working as an assistant in a hospital mortuary when an old acquaintance recognizes him and strong-arms him into helping to steal money destined for a politician. Expecting a double-cross, Bernie plays his own version and his reward from the politician is a job as an investigator in an insurance company. For an ex-cop, the job is perfect, with Bernie’s detective instincts enabling him to spot frauds and quickly gain the attention of his bosses. When the company’s usual shipping investigator reports ill, they decide to reward Bernie’s work by sending him to Athens to verify the claim for a sunken ship. The ship has a dirty history, having been taken from a Jew sent to Auschwitz, and was on a trip to search for sunken treasure. Bernie takes an instant dislike to the German owner and is suspicious of the circumstances related to the claim. When the claimant turns up dead, shot through both eyes, a Greek cop likes Bernie for the murder. Holding his passport and threatening jail, the cop strong-arms Bernie into discovering the murderer and tracking down old Nazis who seem to have returned to Greece to collect what they stole from the Jews of Salonika.

Greeks Bearing Gifts is the thirteenth book in the Bernie Gunther series. In this outing it is 1957. Bernie is living in Munich under an assumed identity and is trying to keep a low profile. However, his peace is broken by an old Berlin colleague and very quickly Bernie’s life first starts to unravel, then takes a turn for the better. In his new role as an insurance claims assessor he is sent to Greece to investigate the legitimacy of a claim relating to a sunken ship. There his luck seems to flip-flop: on the one hand he is placed in the frame for murder and is embroiled in a conspiracy that dates back to the Nazi occupation of the country; on the other hand, he meets and falls for a beautiful Greek woman. As usual, Bernie’s task is to stay alive and extricate himself from the mess he now finds himself in. And also as usual, Kerr does a very nice job of creating an intriguing plot that places his anti-hero into the midst of real-life characters and historical events. There is a strong sense of place and time, the characterisation is excellent, there’s nice references to Greek mythology and noir films, and story for the most part is compelling. The only fly in the ointment was the troublesome coincidence that some of the people in Munich are the same as he's dealing with in Greece, creating what felt like an over-extended plot device. Nonetheless, this is Kerr and Gunther in fine form, with Greeks Bearing Gifts being an entertaining and engaging read.

Lazy Sunday Service

I was very saddened to hear of the recent death of Philip Kerr. His Bernie Gunther series remains a favourite; one of the few series I would buy in hardback on release so I could catch up with Bernie's tangled and mangled life. There was a large gap between the original trilogy (1989-91) and the next 9 books (2006-17), but it was worth the wait. There's one more due for release shortly, Greeks Bearing Gifts, and he has a number of other novels. Here are my reviews of his books on the blog.

Prussian Blue
The Lady from Zagreb
A Man Without Breath
Field Grey
Prague Fatale
If the Dead Rise Not 
The Other Side of Silence 


My posts this week:
Review of Jade Dragon Mountain by Elsa Hart
Review of The Way Back to Florence by Glenn Haybittle
Can I go home now?

Review of Prussian Blue by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2017)

1956. Bernie Gunther, former Berlin Kripo detective, is working as a concierge on the French Riviera. Gunther has a colourful past including working as a private investigator and for the upper echelons of the SD and SS; the latter under duress as he’s no Nazi. He’s also a wanted man for war crimes he didn’t commit. Ernst Mielke, the deputy head of the East German Stasi, wants Gunther to travel to Britain to murder a female agent that’s fallen out of favour. To make him compliant, Mielke’s brought along a small team led by Friedrich Korsch, an old Kripo colleague. Despite making the penalty for failing the mission clear, Bernie is reluctant to participate and loses his chaperones, making a break for West Germany. As he heads for the border, pursued by the Stasi and the French police who suspect him of a double murder, he recollects the last case he worked with his former Kripo colleague. That took place in early 1939 when he was asked by Martin Bormann and Reinhard Heydrich to investigate the shooting of a SS officer on the terrace of Hitler’s mountaintop retreat in Obersalzberg. Heydrich considers Gunther the best detective in Germany, and one not driven by political ideology. It’s unthinkable that a man can be killed on the Fuhrer’s terrace, especially a week before the leader’s fiftieth birthday, and Bormann gives Bernie one week to catch the killer or face dire consequences. Bernie soon discovers there are no shortage of suspects given the widespread corruption linked to the development in the area. The problem is identifying which snake in the grass is the murderer and to tread carefully enough that he doesn’t end up dead as well. However, full of methamphetamines to keep him at work night and day, Bernie has big feet and the drugs make him emboldened. 

Prussian Blue is the twelfth instalment of the Bernie Gunther series. As with the last few outings the story is split into related threads, one set in 1956, the other in 1939. In 1956 Bernie is on the run from the East Germany Stasi who want him to murder a rogue agent and the French police who want him for murder. While fleeing from the French Riviera towards West Germany, Bernie remembers the last case he worked with the man now in pursuit of him. That involved him searching for the murderer of a high-ranking SS officer serving at Hitler’s mountaintop retreat, conducting the investigation while trying to deal with several senior Nazis and widespread local corruption. As with the other tales, the undoubted draw of Prussian Blue is the acerbic, world weary lead character whose principles have slowly been eroded over the years, and the historical contextualisation. A bit like Forrest Gump, Bernie has a habit of rubbing shoulders with a range of high profile historical characters and real-world events. Both threads are engaging, but there’s an unevenness in the telling. The 1956 thread is quite linear and operates as a short story interleaved between episodes of the more developed, complex 1939 thread. In many ways the 1956 thread more acts as a framing for the 1939 story and a bridge to the next episode in Bernie’s tale, moving him back to Germany. While the 1939 tale is engaging and rich in historical detail it’s also somewhat drawn out, with quite a bit of unnecessary explication, and in my view would have benefitted from quite a bit of pruning. Overall, despite my quibbles, another enjoyable addition to the series.

Review of The Other Side of Silence by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2016)

1956, Cote D’Azur.  An ex-kripo detective in pre-war Berlin, Bernie Gunther is now working as the concierge in the Grand Hotel du Saint-Jean-Cap-Ferrat, spending his days helping guests and nights playing bridge or trying to drink his troubles away.  And Bernie has a habit of attracting or creating trouble.  When he spots an old foe, an ex-gestapo member and accomplished blackmailer, Harold Hebel, enter the hotel he senses the past might once again be about to come back and haunt him.  Not long after he’s asked by the novelist and former spy Somerset Maugham, who is residing locally, to be the intermediary in paying a sum of money for a compromising photograph.  Reluctantly, Bernie agrees wanting justice for past misdeeds but knowing that they’ll be much more to the sting operation if Hebel is involved.

The Other Side of Silence is the eleventh book in the Bernie Gunther series.  This one is mainly set in 1956 in the south of France, but shuttles back to Berlin in 1938 and Konigsberg in 1944/45 for brief interludes.  Bernie is his usual self-depreciating, world weary and sarcastic self, living a life where he unwittingly comes into contact with famous people and gets dragged into and implicated in key events.  In this case, he’s drawn into the world of Somerset Maugham and the Cambridge spies, Guy Burgess, Donald Maclean and Anthony Blunt, as well as recounting his link to the sinking of the MV Wilhelm Gustloff in 1945, in which around ten thousand people perished.  The central hook is Bernie being hired by Maugham to act as intermediary in a blackmail payment to an old foe and former gestapo member, the odious Harold Hebel.  It’s a nice setup and Kerr spins out an interesting tale, working in a femme fatale, a sinister twist, and a murder subplot.  At times, the pacing and plotting felt a little uneven, and the murder subplot was a bit of an unnecessary distraction, but there are plenty of really well-crafted scenes.  The denouement, in which Bernie creates a large lie to save himself while placing his head in another noose, is particularly nicely done.  As usual, Kerr draws a strong set of well realised characters and nicely situates the tale historically.  Overall, an enjoyable addition to the series that fills in more gaps in Bernie’s eventful life.

Review of The Lady from Zagreb by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2015)

After his recent trip to Prague that ended with the assassination of Reinhard Heydrich, veteran cop, Bernie Gunther, is back in Berlin working once again in Kripo.  However, his old boss, Arthur Nebe, has secured him a job with the War Crime Bureau, but first he wants him to deliver a speech at a meeting of the International Criminal Police Commission about one his famous cases.  That meeting is taking place in Wannasee in the villa of a former rich businessman who is now languishing in prison, and despite his better judgement, Bernie starts to investigate the transfer of the house.  At the meeting he is asked to babysit two Swiss policemen and his interest is piqued in some strange transactions between a German business owned by the SS and Swiss companies.  Before he’s made much headway, his 'employer' is murdered and he's transferred to the War Crime Bureau and heads East to investigate the Katyn massacre.  On his return to Berlin he is summoned by the Minister of Propaganda, Goebbels, who wants Bernie to go to Croatia to track down the father of his favour starlet at the German film company, UFA, the beautiful, Dalia Dresner.  It’s a task that he has no option in avoiding and this is doubly so once he meets and instantly falls in love with the charismatic Dalia.  What he finds in Croatia makes even a witness of the horrors of the Nazi atrocities in Russia blanche and he returns to Germany determined to pursue his leading lady, aware that he is crossing one of the most dangerous men in the Reich.  She, however, has fled to Switzerland, and the home of her rich husband, a Serb nationalist.

The Lady from Zagreb is the tenth book in the Bernie Gunther series.  Many of the books have intersecting characters and plotlines and span a number of years and places.  This book is no different, spanning 1942 to 1956, but mainly focusing on 1942-1943, and includes a number of re-occurring real-life characters such as Arthur Nebe, Joseph Goebbels, and Friedrich Minoux, along with fictional characters such as Bernie’s wife, Kirsten.  The tale picks up after Prague Fatale and spans The Man Without Breath.  The strength and the real joy of the series is the character of Bernie Gunther, a world weary, sarcastic, caustic, anti-Nazi, who stumbles through life with bombast, luck, cynicism and bloody-mindedness, surviving mainly because he's useful.  Bernie is in fine form in The Lady from Zagreb, investigating two cases that both have Swiss connections, and one of which involves an excursion into the confused killing fields of Croatia.  The plot is somewhat rambling, and it’s fair to say that there is quite a bit going on between the two cases, and for good measure Kerr drops all kinds of other small vignettes into the story.  Moreover, there are a couple of somewhat clunky plot devices and whilst it is not necessary, an understanding of how the other books situate the fractured timeline is helpful.  That said, Kerr manages to keep the story together and coherent and the pages turning.  And as usual, there is a strong historicization and sense of time and place.  The result is an engaging and disturbing tale of lust, corruption, mass murder, and surviving in a society that has lost its moral compass.  An interesting addition to Bernie’s unfolding biography.

Review of A Man Without Breath by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2013)

It’s winter 1943 and former Berlin cop, Bernie Gunther, is working for the German War Crimes Bureau investigating supposed crimes committed by Allied forces.  Rumours are starting circulate about a  grave of Polish officers in woods outside of Smolensk and Gunther is flown from Berlin into German occupied Russia to investigate.  The area is littered with mass graves, not all of which the German’s want to be discovered.  But if the rumour is true then it could prove to be a useful piece of propaganda which can used to drive a wedge between Russia and its allies.  The grave, however, turns out to be just one problem for Gunther to deal with, along with disgruntled and plotting senior officers and the murder of two local signals operators.  Matters are not helped by the detective’s gruff style and his ability to rub people up the wrong way.  With the Russians set to advance on their positions, Gunther needs to oversee the grave excavations, solve the local murders and move to safer terrain.

I’m a great fan of the Bernie Gunther series.  I’ve read all nine books, buying the last few in the first weeks of release.  A Man Without Breath is a solid enough addition to Bernie’s story, though it is by no means Kerr’s best work.  Kerr writes with a very strong and engaging hardboiled voice.  His characters are vivid, the historical and social contextualisation and sense of place are excellent.  And so it is with A Man Without Breath.  There are three issues with the story, however, that undermine its telling somewhat.  The first is Kerr has tried to cram in too many plotlines and incidents - the Katyn woods massacre and subsequent German propaganda, the plot to kill Hitler by Wehrmacht officers, the Rosenstrasse demonstration by German wives at the arrest of their Jewish husbands, the Gleiwitz incident that started the Second World War, Spanish Fascist experiments on Republican prisoners, several murders that occur whilst Gunther investigates the Katyn massacre, and a love affair.  Any two of these would have been sufficient hooks for a strong, tight plot, but the combination of all of them leads to a bit of a muddle.  Second, the book is overly long (over 500 pages in hardback) and not just because of the plotlines -- several passages could have been tightened up or deleted as they were largely redundant to the plot.  Third, Kerr has Gunther murder a relatively innocent character in cold blood when there were other solutions.  Bernie is no saint, but his appeal is that he has a strong moral compass in a corrupt regime and the people he tangles with are mostly monsters; he witnesses, investigates and avenges war crimes, but he doesn’t commit them.  The action bumped me firmly out of the story and changed my whole view of the character.  The effect of these three issues were to deaden the read, which was a shame, as given the place, time and themes of the book this had the potential to be excellent.  Regardless, it’s an interesting and mostly enjoyable read and I look forward to the next instalment in Bernie’s adventures.

Review of Prague Fatale by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2011)

After serving with death squads in the Ukraine, Bernie Gunther is back in Berlin and working as a police detective. Even more disillusioned with the Nazi regime, consumed with self-loathing, and unafraid to express his cynicism and critique, he survives through bullish good police work, cunning and connections. When a Dutch foreign worker is found stabbed to death on rail tracks, he’s assigned to the case. Shortly after he rescues a beautiful woman, Arianne Tauber, being attacked at a darkened station. The man runs off only to be hit by a car in the blackout. The following day the man is found dead, identified as a suspected Czech resistance agent. Whilst Gunther investigates the case further, he falls for Arianne, who’s working a good-time girl in a high class jazz club. As the case starts to stall, he gets summoned to Prague by his nemesis, Reinhard Heydrich, the new Reichsprotector of Bohemia and Moravia. Some of Heydrich’s Nazi colleagues seem to be plotting his murder and he wants Gunther to be his bodyguard and detective. On a large estate just outside of Prague, Heydrich has gathered a motley collection of senior military figures to celebrate his new appointment. But rather than Heydrich being murdered, it is his adjutant that is found shot dead in a room locked from the inside. With Arianne sight-seeing around Prague, Gunther has the task of solving the case with a house full of military personnel who nearly all out-rank him, and Heydrich playing his usual games.

The four great strengths of Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series is the historicization within the Nazi regime, a strong noir voice, the lead character - a self-loathing, cynical, cantankerous cop with a moral core - and well constructed stories. Prague Fatale delivers on the first two of these in spades. Kerr drops us into Berlin and Prague in 1941, the politics, the power-games within the Nazi regime, the suffering, the resistance. He evokes a very strong sense of place and time. The prose and dialogue are excellent, as usual. The novel is slightly let down, however, by the latter two. Kerr’s other Gunther novels use movement through time and space as a means to develop the main character and drive the story. Prague Fatale is a fairly static book, divided into two, and there is a linear time narrative with the story set over a few weeks. The first part is set in Berlin and provides the set-up, the second, longer part, in Heydrich’s estate just outside of Prague. It is a locked room mystery, with a notable nod to Agatha Christie. The characterisation as a whole is good, and the story is full of real-life senior Nazis, however we learn very little new about Gunther. And whilst the story is historically embedded in what was happening in Berlin and Prague at the time, it is somewhat long-winded and lacking pace compared with the earlier books (and probably double the length of Christie’s locked room mysteries). In my view, the Prague section of the story would have benefitted from losing a good thirty to fifty pages or more. And part of the ending was telegraphed from a very long way out. That said, this is still a good, entertaining read, just not quite up there with the other Gunther books in my mind. As ever, though, I look forward to the next in one of my favourite series.

Review of Field Grey by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2010)

1954 and Bernie Gunther, ex-Kripo detective, reluctant SS member and wanted war criminal is in Cuba. Feeling increasingly vulnerable he decides to escape by boat to Haiti. Only fate plays a poor hand and he’s intercepted by the US Navy and, after time in Guantanamo prison, he’s passed onto US intelligence. From New York he’s flown back to Berlin and exhaustively interviewed concerning his war time activities in France and Russia. The record shows that Bernie has performed some horrendous atrocities, and it’s true that his history is far from saintly, but putting the record straight is no simple matter when some of his former comrades are prepared to put his neck in a noose to save their own. Ultimately he is given a choice: help French intelligence identify a wanted war criminal or go on trial and face the consequences. Always the prickly pragmatist, Bernie once again becomes the pawn in a larger game, as his past catches up and threatens to overwhelm him.

Field Grey is the seventh Bernie Gunther novel. In my view it’s one of the best crime series presently being written. The last book – If the Dead Rise Not – was probably the weakest book in the series (despite winning the CWA Ellis Peters award for historical crime fiction), but Field Grey is a real return to form. In fact, I think it’s the strongest of the seven. It is a big book linking together parts of Bernie’s life between 1931 and 1954 and a connected set of events and actors in Germany, France, Ukraine and Russia. As usual, Kerr manages to blend in many well-known real life characters and events, and this book focuses in particular on Erich Mielke, a communist who murdered two policemen in 1931 and later became head of the Stasi in post-war East Germany. The plotting is intricate, with the flashbacks skilfully interwoven with the 1954 narrative, and dotted with insightful observations and history. The pacing is well judged, the characterization excellent, the dialogue and action credible and engaging, and the balance between show and tell just right. A very entertaining read. It is going to take a very good book to knock this off the top of the best read of 2011 list.

What we do or what others think we are?

There's a nice passage in Philip Kerr's Field Grey where Bernie Gunther - a man with a mixed past, vehemently anti-Nazi but with blood on his hands - that discusses his position in the world as he sees it. Basically, it asks us to think about our identity - are we the sum of what we do, or is it more important how others view us, regardless of what we do? And how does that shape our psychology and how we act in the world?

'A man doesn't work for his enemies unless he has little choice in the matter. Or no choice at all. I'm just a cheap paperknife. People pick me up when they need to open an envelope and then they put me down again. I don't have any say in the matter. As far back as I can remember that's all I've been when I thought I was more than that. The truth is that we're just what we've done and what we do, and not what we ever want to be.'

'You're wrong,' she said. 'It doesn't matter what we've done or what we do. What matters is what others think we are. If you're looking for meaning then here it is. Let me supply that to you. You'll always be a good man, Gunther. In my brown eyes you'll always be the man who was there for me, when I needed someone to be there. Maybe that's all any of us need.'

So - Are we what we've done and what we do? Or does what matter what others think we are?

Saturday Snippet: If the Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr (2009)

In the following passage Bernie Gunther ruminates on the meaning and life and death in his characteristically philosophical way, which is usually tempered by hefty dose of humourous cynicism, but not in this case. My review is here

Later on, I went out to my car and in the shifting dark I thought I saw the figure of the dead gardener, standing beside the well where he’d drowned. Maybe the house was haunted, after all. And if the house wasn’t haunted, I know I was, and probably always would be. Some us die in a day. For some, like me, it takes much longer than that. Years, perhaps. We all die, like Adam, it’s true, only it’s not every man that’s made alive again, like Ernest Hemingway. If the dead rise not then what happens to a man’s spirit? And if they do, with what body shall we live again? I didn’t have the answers. Nobody did. Perhaps, if the dead could rise and be incorruptible and I could be changed for ever in the blinking of an eye, then dying might be worth the trouble of getting killed, or killing myself.

Review of If The Dead Rise Not by Philip Kerr (Quercus, 2009)

It’s only eighteen months since the end of the Weimar Republic and unable to stomach working for the Nazi regime homicide detective Bernie Gunther has quit the police force and taken a job as the house detective at the world famous Adlon Hotel, just a stone’s throw from the Brandenburg Gate. There are rumours of impending race laws, but the Jewish population are already suffering daily humiliation and discrimination, including being expelled from all German sporting organisations. Such anti-Semitism looks like it might draw international condemnation and pressure with the Americans in particular threatening to boycott to the 1936 Olympics, but inexplicably the American delegate visiting Berlin reports to Roosevelt that stories concerning anti-Jewish actions are overly hyped. Two American guests at the Adlon have a vested interest in the decision – the beautiful Noreen Charalambides, a Jewish journalist and aspiring novelist who wishes to expose the truth, and Max Reles, a Chicago gangster, friendly with several high-ranking Nazis, who wants to repeat the mob’s success at the Los Angeles Olympics at rigging the construction contracts. Gunther has problems of his own – he’s managed to accidentally kill a cop and he needs his Jewish grandmother to be airbrushed from history – but he’s also soon unwittingly caught between the two Americans and has two murders to solve – that of a German businessman and a Jewish boxer. The only problem is, very few people want them solved. Twenty years later, having managed to survive the war, Gunther is hiding out in Cuba on an Argentine passport when the ghosts of the case reappear, only the Chicago mob have swapped deals with the Nazis for Batista’s regime.

Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther series has a lot of things going for it. First, Kerr’s narrative is colourful and engaging, and he tells a well plotted story. Second, he expertly blends fiction with real people, places and historical events. Third, the books are politically astute and targeted, whilst at the same time being multi-layered, complex and ambiguous. Kerr is vehemently anti-Nazi, but he recognises that post Weimer Republic Germany was a cauldron of competing ideologies and that personal relationships often over-rode ideological differences. So, for example, former colleagues who have become pro-Nazi are prepared to help Gunther out as a personal favour, and vice versa, even though they know his political views. Fourth, in Bernie Gunther he has created one of the finest characters in crime fiction. Gunther is no black and white character with little depth. Rather he’s a resonant, luminous, multi-coloured, complex, compromised and flawed individual. While his heart is roughly in the right place, Gunther is morally suspect on many levels with his personal desires, head strong nature and smart mouth clouding his decision making, often placing him in situations where lying, cheating, stealing, killing, etc. is a necessary solution.

If The Dead Rise Not is a solid addition to the series, but in my view is not quite as good as some of the others in the series (which given the very high standard of the previous books is always going to be a tough challenge). The dialogue was, as ever, sharp and often caustic and very funny. The characterisation was excellent. The story was interesting. My issue was with pacing and coincidence. For me the 1934 period of the book, which was effectively the back story for 1954 period, was too long and drawn out and the 1954 period too short and underdeveloped. My sense was that the balance needed to be shifted to at least a fifty-fifty split in length, with the Cuba part of the plot extended and deepened to cover more of the politics of the time and the mob connections, and provide more details of Gunther’s life post-Argentina (following on from the last book – A Quiet Flame). The ending was also too swift. In addition, the plot hinges on a coincidence in which three characters who have not seen each other in twenty years meet in the one location (on a different continent) in the space of a few hours. I had a hard time buying that. Despite these two issues, the book was still a highly enjoyable read and I look forward to the next instalment in the series.

The largest geopolitical project in living memory

Over the past year I've read a number of novels set either just before or during the second world war including books by Alan Furst, Philip Kerr, John Lawton, Marek Krajewski, Hans Fallada, Carlo Lucarelli and others, along with some straight history books, but I haven't been keeping track of history itself. Today marks the 70th anniversary of the start of the Second World War and Germany's invasion of Poland (The Polish Officer by Furst does a good job of capturing the first few days as Poland desperately tries to put in place the basis for resistance knowing that it is being over-run).

Of course, I haven't pre-prepared a post, but I have been thinking about doing one based on a conversation I had with Martin Dodge last week, so I'm hastily moving it forward. At his Mapping Manchester exhibition we were talking about whether the John Ryland's library had survived the blitz intact and that led onto a discussion about bomb census maps. Martin kindly sent me on a link to a story that discussed them. I'd be really interested to take a look at them in more detail. I always remember the two old ladies who lived next door when I was growing up who used to describe going up Caldy Hill to watch Liverpool and Birkenhead docks being bombed. They were great story-tellers - you felt like you were there watching the cities burn.

The tracing below is from the Christmas raids of Dec 20-22, 1940 on the Merseyside area when 365 people died. It is designed to be overlain on a base map, hence why there are so few roads, etc. shown (much cheaper to keep a clean map and have lots of tracings). A daily tracing would be taken so that the pattern of bombing could be tracked over time.


The tracing shows the area between Bootle and Walton and plots 26 separate incidents in quite a confined area. Each incident is given a number, followed by the size and type of bomb, and the location of any unexploded ordnance. Collectively the maps reveal that by the end of the war Liverpool was the second most bombed UK city after London.

These other maps are of Brighton and Bristol.

I've been fascinated by the Second World War for a while now given it was the largest and most complex geopolitical event in modern history with many civil wars operating inside transnational wars, and political ideology explicitly reshaping territory and lives through violence. I've been trying to collect books that explains what went on different parts of the world, including some that traditionally get looked over (e.g. Aleutian Islands [the only bit of the USA occupied by the Japanese], Malta, Isle of Man, Ireland, etc) so I can have a go at mentally stitching the whole lot together.

I'll perhaps try to do something on Irish neutrality tomorrow. Ireland declared its neutrality on the 2nd Sept, the day before Britain and France declared war. It was a policy that was rigidly maintained right to the end of the war.

Lest we forget ...

Pre-order splurge

I've had an interesting journey trying to get The Rule Book into Irish bookshops; I've learnt a lot about the book publishing industry in the process. I won't bore you with the details but it seems that the impasse has been cleared (by me taking a cut in royalties so that the publisher and distributor both got what they wanted). I got two reports yesterday of sightings, one in the Dublin Airport, the other in the window of Hodges Figgis, the largest bookshop in Dublin. Hopefully the blumming thing will now find its way into reader's hands ...

Anyway, feeling chipper with myself I decided to splurge and pre-order some books. I very rarely do this, but there are a couple of authors and series I'm prepared put my hand in pocket for. So I've ordered the following, which when they are delivered will zip to the top of a to read pile that's already rickety.


Are there any authors or series that you feel compelled to buy the minute they're published (and forget the price)?







I can't wait to get stuck into these. If they all turn up on the same day I won't know where to start. I also know a couple of people who'll be pestering me for first dibs once I've finished. In fact I imagine they might get snaffled the moment I turn my back.

I also decided to buy two others. Old Flames is the second book in the Troy series, the first of which I reviewed yesterday. If Donna Moore's blog is anything to go by then Go To Helena Handbasket should be a blast. Expect reviews this side of Christmas! I know I'm not going to be able to stop myself, but I really don't need to buy any more books before then.













Flip-it - I've just read the order email from Amazon. Peter Temple is published 3rd Sept, Philip Kerr 10th Sept, and Terry Pratchett 1st Oct. I just followed the default settings which groups the delivery into as few as parcels as possible so the expected delivery date is 7th-13th Oct! I need to to keep a better eye on that next time. Grrrr.

Review of Before the Deluge: A Portrait of Berlin in the 1920s by Otto Friedrich, published by HarperPerennial (1995, originally 1972)

I got interested in Berlin before the war through reading Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels (I’ve also recently read the excellent The Real Odessa: Smuggling the Nazis to Peron's Argentina by Uki Goni after reading book five in the series set in Argentina). It’s taken a while to read as its been my breakfast book and I’ve read a fair few novels whilst this has been on the go.

Before the Deluge is a social history of Berlin during the Weimar Republic from 1919 to 1933, covering traditional politics, economics, social conditions, cultural politics, the arts, and the lives of ordinary Berliners and the movers and shakers. It’s rich, dense, insightful, and full of interesting commentary and anecdotes based on the author’s experiences, documentary research, and interviews with key actors still alive in the late 1960s.

Rapidly expanding in population size, Berlin during the 1920s was a city of turbulent and vibrant change – governments coming and going; unions and the army vying for power; communists, socialists and fascists fighting running battles, assassinating rivals, and waging propaganda wars; the currency crashing to worthlessness followed by an economic boom and then another crash; cabaret, theatre, movies and music flourishing; social order becoming liberalised with widespread naturism and promiscuity at the same time that anti-semitism grows steadily; crime, prostitution and drug taking becoming rife; and the intellectual elite in psychoanalysis, physics, architecture and other disciplines flocking to the city.

What Friedrich’s book makes very clear is that there was nothing predestined about the rise of Nazism and the collapse of the Weimar Republic. It was the culmination of a complex set of contingent, relational process, not some teleological inevitability, and in Berlin the National Socialists never received more than 25 percent of the vote despite Goebbels best efforts (nor more than 44 percent nationally). Criminals have always found a route to political power. Usually it is through some kind of coup. Hitler tried this in the earlier 1920s and failed. Where he succeeded was through the democratic process. Ultimately ordinary, innocent people voted criminal minds into office thus ensuring the end of democracy and the descent into megalomaniacal nationalism. What that has tended to do is blind us to the fact that Germany was a cauldron of competing ideologies through the whole period of the Third Reich – we fall into the trap of seeing Germans at that time as a monolithic nation of fanatical fascists. And that’s what is so refreshing about Philip Kerr’s novels - Gunther is an anti-Nazi cop trying to get by in a corrupt regime.

If you want to get a sense of Germany in the 1920s and the path to fascist power, then Friedrich’s book is a great place to start.