Berlin Noir: March Violets, The Pale Criminal, A German Requiem (Bernie Gunther, 1-3)

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The title of this novel is a derogatory reference to people who decided to join the National Socialist Party right after Hitler had himself declared dictator by a vote in the Reichstag in late March 1933 – often as a form of profiteering. And yet, despite the vein of horror and tragedy that runs through every page of these novels, they remain a pleasure to read, largely due to their narrator, private eye Bernie Gunther.

A richly satisfying mystery, one that evokes the noir sensibilities of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald while breaking important new ground of its own. But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of the Nazi regime. The towns like Berlin that were initially “liberated” by the Red Army suffered terrible looting and destruction on the ground. Set two years after "March Violets" in 1938 against a backdrop of the Munich Agreement and Kristallnacht Kerr deftly weaves fact and fiction as Gunther is engaged by a wealthy Frau to trace a blackmailer; but before you know it he's co-opted back into the Kriminalpolizei (Kripo), now part of Himmler's Reich Security Organisation, to investigate the serial sex-murders of Aryan teenage girls, killings with links to a conspiracy at the core of the SS [and of course in the best fictional style to the original throw-away blackmail story].uk/landing-page/quercus/quercus-company-information/">The data controller is Quercus Editions Ltd.

Oh, but our hardbitten narrator-detective has not read the genre, of course, and this awkward bit of authorial obviousness almost caused me to set the book aside. The mysteries are first-rate hard-boiled stuff, with plenty of fistfights and other manly action, as well as twisting plots full of double-crosses and surprises.It is a powerful exploration of the occult side of Nazism and a skillful evocation of the social tensions that pervaded prewar Berlin. Hired by a wealthy industrialist to investigate the murder of his daughter and her husband, Bernie finds himself drawn into the lethal internal politics of the Nazi party. The following quotes from the first book will either make you cringe or go running for your own copy. So good so far but then towards the end it all goes a bit urgh as Kerr achieves closure wrapping-up the final loose thread through a massive coincidence which frankly beggars belief, and after that the book suddenly finishes with a final chapter that's really more of an epilogue in which we get a recap; it's almost as though there's a chapter or two missing and that's why I marked it down when it could have been four or five stars!

She had the kind of body I'd only ever dreamed about, in the sort of dream I'd often dreamed of having again.But then he went freelance, and each case he tackled sucked him further into the grisly excesses of Nazi subculture. He has won both the RBA International Prize for Crime Writing, and the CWA Ellis Peters Historic Crime Award. It is 1938 and Bernie Gunther is back on the mean streets of Berlin with his new partner, Bruno Stahlecker, another ex-police officer. Kerr also avoids relying on cheap shtick that curses many neo-noirs, the cheap glamour and romance used to portray this era, and the moral simplification that boils the Nazi era down black and white hats, villain and hero.