Name: Andrew John Kinney's review of Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr
Item: Berlin Noir
Rating: 3
Author: Andrew John Kinney

Philip Kerr

3 spændingsromaner. Den tidligere politimand Bernie Gunther mener han har set alt som gadebetjent i 1930ernes Berlin men hver sag viser mere fra den nazistiske subkultur, og efter krigen viser oprydning i Wien endnu flere grusomheder

March Violets; The Pale Criminal; A German Requiem

Berlin Noir

Martijn Runia

Andrew John Kinney

So, I'm returning to this review because I made a clerical error. I had read the first two books in the series, and was trying to separate my reviews, but I ended up putting a general review on the trilogy rather than critiquing each book separately as was my intent. Now that I have read the third book (German Requiem), I am more impressed. The post-war Germany that Kerr describes is quite interesting. I was in Germany in the late '80's, just before the wall came down, and there were still echoes of that early post-war era to be found. I think Kerr has done the era justice, and I liked the oblique tie-in to the film, The Third Man. So I've upped my rating to 3.49 stars, and I may read more of his books, despite the fact they are potboilers, and despite his anti-French prejudice.......

A three star rating is maybe a bit too harsh for these noir detective novels set in Berlin. They are certainly page-turners, though they imitate Hammett and Chandler a little too obviously. The Berlin-in-the-30's atmosphere is roughly correct, to my knowledge. I guess I'm a little skeptical of the portrayal of average Germans being largely opposed to Hitler and the Nazis. It's true that Hitler was never as popular in Berlin as he was in Bavaria, but he was elected with 37% of the vote initially, and his popularity went up steadily from there as he succeeded in absorbing Austria, Czechoslovakia, and finally France. I would be more interested in a non-fiction work that examined how the feelings of Germans toward the Party evolved in the run up to the war. Having lived in Germany, and knowing how truly the majority of Germans regret the rise of the Nazis, it would be enlightening to understand exactly how they consolidated power. I know it in general terms, but not in detail. Considering the current global rise of right-wing nationalism, it is a pertinent question.

So yes, I enjoyed the books, but I was left wanting more than noir detective stories set in the shadow of the rise of Hitler. One thing the books illustrate is the extent to which Nazism was a kleptocracy, in which anyone with a bit of power stole from stigmatized groups: Jews, of course, but really anyone who was not a staunch Nazi. And they practiced the same sort of theft in the countries they occupied; Nazism was more like an organized crime syndicate running a government than what we think of as a government. Much of the incentive for going after the Jews was to get their businesses and money, and women were banned from most jobs in order to "solve" the unemployment crisis by filling those jobs with men while counting women as "homemakers" in the statistics. By the way, while Kerr has some interesting female characters, there is fair amount of objectivization in the great tradition of noir novels that women readers might take offense to.

Anyway, it was a quick, entertaining read if you like detective novels, and it may lead you to contemplate how our era resembles (or doesn't) the 1930's.

Anthony Sabourin

I read an interview with the poet and writer Mark Leidner and he said "My favorite thing to read (and recommend) is Philip Kerr’s Bernie Gunther novels, about a private detective solving gruesome crimes in Nazi Germany. I’ve never read anything as dark and probing about the problem of evil that also shows the power and beauty of language in such an entertaining and accessible way." And that sounded amazing, so good, the best, a blurb that's better than the books. But the books themselves are like...the best second tier pizza place in your town.

Martijn Runia &
Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr

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Martijn Runia &Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr

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Martijn Runia &
Berlin Noir by Philip Kerr