Berlin Noir: WITH March Violets (Penguin Crime/Mystery) | 
 enlarge | Author: Philip Kerr
Publisher: Penguin Books Ltd
Category: Book
List Price: £14.99
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Rating:  13 reviews
Sales Rank: 7514
Media: Paperback
Pages: 848
Number Of Items: 1
Shipping Weight (lbs): 1.2
Dimensions (in): 7.6 x 5 x 1.5
ISBN: 0140231706
Dewey Decimal Number: 823.914
EAN: 9780140231700
ASIN: 0140231706
Publication Date: April 29, 1993
Availability: Usually dispatched within 1-2 business days
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| Customer Reviews: Read 8 more reviews...
 Serial misogynist? June 19, 2008
mad_mushroom
0 out of 1 found this review helpful
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 cliches, 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 Goering.
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 :) March 30, 2008
Jan Jensen
1 out of 1 found this review 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 :))
A German Sam Spade May 16, 2007
steve b (Dudley England)
10 out of 10 found this review 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 November 20, 2006
Leonard Fleisig (Washington, D.C.)
16 out of 16 found this review 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
The Long Goodbye (To Berlin) February 26, 2004
12 out of 20 found this review helpful
Formulaic Raymond Chandler/Dashiell Hammett rip offs set in pre and post-war Germany. The conception is OK, and a policeman working on a murder case in a society which is itself utterly evil is a fairly interesting idea. But it doesn't work. The Chandler model in particular is shamelessly aped which, as James Ellroy has said elsewhere, is not the way to write detective fiction. You can't copy such a highly stylized technique, certainly not as clumsily as Kerr does. Some of the metaphors will make you wince - and not in the way they are supposed to. Even the hero's world weary cynicism and unlikely ability to cop off with every woman he meets (sixteen year old Hitler Youth girls, movie stars, the ace reporter who helps him out) are copied from Marlowe. Other characters are pretty perfunctory and there's a bit more sex and violence but none of the genius that distinguished the other two. That's fair enough; not everyone can be a Hammett or Chandler, but by following their model so closely Kerr begs the reader to make the comparison and that's when things fall apart.
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