The latest Bernie Gunther novel by Philip Kerr (pictured above) hit American bookstores last week (March 18, 2010). If The Dead Rise Not is the sixth Bernie Gunther novel but it is the prequel to the Berlin Noir Trilogy.
Philip Kerr's Bernie Gunther novels give us readers an eyes-wide-open tour of Nazi Germany and all the evils (both big and small) that the Nazis inflicted on the German citizens and the world during WWII. Bernie was a police detective of the old Wiemar Republic. When he sees the Nazis begin to takeover, he leaves the official police to first become a hotel "house" detective at the famous Adlon Hotel in Berlin and later forced backed into the Nazi police force by Heydrich.
After the Berlin Noir Trilogy, Kerr continued to tell Bernie's story and the story of Germany following WWII in one novel. The next tells of Bernie's defection to Argentina where he soon finds himself investigating a murder that is eerily like a murder he investigated back in Berlin. The third and most recent post Berlin Noir novel, as I mentioned above, is set before the first novel of the triloby to fill in Bernie's backstory and relate how major characters first appeared in Bernie's life.
Bernie is a great sleuth. He isn't perfect. He tries to help people in need and often breaks the law to do so. His morals and values change according to new realities. The supportuning characters that pop up in the novels are interesting and feel real. And Bernie also runs into all the top Nazis even the Leader himself during his investigations and gives us bone-chilling descriptions of men that haunted and still haunt the dreams of those that lived through Nazi Germany and WWII. The writing is crisp and the dialogue snappy as in the best noirs.
Listed below are the Bernie Gunther Novels in publishing order. The year listed following the year published is the date in which the action of the novel takes place.
Bernie Gunther Novels
- March Violets* (1989) - 1936
- The Pale Criminal* (1990) - 1938
- A German Requiem* (1991) - 1947
- The One From The Other (2006) - 1949
- A Quiet Flame (2008) - 1950
- If The Dead Rise Not (2010) - 1934
*The first three novels are also refered to as Berlin Noir and are available in one volume.
Publishers:
- Viking, London.
- Quercus, London. (From 2008)
- Putnam, New York.
