May Author of the Month: Philip Kerr
Wednesday, May 01, 2013 at 11:07am
England's Philip Kerr enjoyed a stellar literary debut. March Violets, the first of his Bernie Gunther novels, appeared in 1989 to wide critical appreciation. By the time the third novel in the series was published two years later, Kerr's reputation was established. Not wanting to be typecast, he turned to writing standalone thrillers and children's books that disappointed some of his readers. But even Kerr could not deny Bernie Gunther, and he returned with his dogged German sleuth in The One From the Other in 2006.
In Kerr's new book, A Man Without Breath, Bernie has a new job at the German War Crimes Bureau in Berlin. The year is 1943. A month has passed since the stunning defeat at Stalingrad, but unsettling reports are circulating of a mass grave in a forest near Smolensk. Polish officers killed by the Russians? This would give the Nazi regime an unexpected propaganda victory over the Russians. Bernie is dispatched to gather evidence. Once there, however, he discovers a cunning killer is hiding behind the carnage, someone Bernie must put a face to before the killer puts an end to Bernie.
| Categories: Mystery & Crime, Saskatoon, Winnipeg, Author of the Month |
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A Quiet Flame
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In this riveting historical mystery novel from New York Times bestselling author Philip Kerr, Bernie Gunther trails a serial killer in 1950's Buenos Aires...
Buenos Aires, 1950. After being falsely accused of war crimes, Bernie Gunther--like the Nazis he has always despised--has been offered a new life and a clean passport by the Perón government. But the tough, fast-talking ex-Berlin detective doesn't have the luxury of laying low. The local police pressure Bernie into taking on a case in which a girl has turned up gruesomely mutilated. What's more, her murder just might be linked to a missing German banker's daughter and a long-unsolved case Bernie worked back in Berlin before the war. After all, the scum of the earth has been washing up on Argentina's shores--state-licensed murderers and torturers--so why couldn't a serial killer be among them?
If the Dead Rise Not
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Detective Bernie Gunther navigates two corrupt regimes in this "richly satisfying mystery...that evokes the noir sensibilities of Raymond Chandler and Ross Macdonald while breaking new ground of its own"(Los Angeles Times).
Berlin, 1934. Former policeman Bernie Gunther, now a hotel detective, finds himself caught between warring factions of the Nazi apparatus as Hitler and Avery Brundage, the head of the U.S. Olympic Committee, connive to soft-pedal Nazi anti-Semitism before the 1936 Olympiad...
Havana, 1954. Batista, aided by the CIA, has just seized power; Castro is in prison; and the American Mafia is gaining a stranglehold on Cuba's exploding gaming and prostitution industries. Bernie, after being kicked out of Buenos Aires, has resurfaced with a relatively peaceful new life. But he discovers that he cannot truly outrun his past when he collides with an old love and a vicious killer from his Berlin days...
Prague Fatale
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Former detective and reluctant SS officer Bernie Gunther must infiltrate a brutal world of spies, partisan terrorists, and high-level traitors in this "clever and compelling"(The Daily Beast) New York Times bestseller from Philip Kerr.
Berlin, 1941. Bernie is back from the Eastern Front, once again working homicide in Berlin's Kripo and answering to Reinhard Heydrich, a man he both detests and fears. Heydrich has been newly named Reichsprotector of Czechoslovakia. Tipped off that there is an assassin in his midst, he orders Bernie to join him at his country estate outside Prague, where he has invited some of the Third Reich's most odious officials to celebrate his new appointment. One of them is the would-be assassin. Bernie can think of better ways to spend a beautiful autumn weekend, but, as he says, "You don't say no to Heydrich and live."
Field Gray
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This Edgar® Award-nominated novel in Philip Kerr's New York Times bestselling Bernie Gunther series reveals the cynical, hard-boiled detective's harrowing history as an unwilling SS officer in World War 2.
During his eleven years working homicide in Berlin's Kripo, Bernie Gunther learned a thing or two about evil. Then he set himself up as a private detective--until 1940 when Heydrich dragooned him into the SS's field gray uniform and the bloodbath that was the Eastern Front. Spanning twenty-five tumultuous years, Field Gray strides across the killing fields of Europe, landing Bernie in a divided Germany at the height of the Cold War--revealing a treacherous world where the ends justify the means and no one can be trusted...
The One from the Other
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In the fourth mystery in Philip Kerr's New York Times bestselling series, Bernie Gunther--a former policeman and reluctant SS offier--attempts to start over in the aftermath of World War 2 and quickly learns that the past is never far behind you...
Berlin, 1949. Amid the chaos of defeat, Germany is a place of dirty deals, rampant greed, and fleeing Nazis. For Bernie Gunther, Berlin has become far too dangerous. After being forced to serve in the SS in the killing fields of Ukraine, Bernie has moved to Munich to reestablish himself as a private investigator.
Business is slow and his funds are dwindling when a woman hires him to investigate her husband's disappearance. No, she doesn't want him back--he's a war criminal. She merely wants confirmation that he is dead. It's a simple job, but in postwar Germany, nothing is simple--nothing is what it appears to be. Accepting the case, Bernie takes on far more than he'd bargained for, and before long, he is on the run, facing enemies from every side.
A Philosophical Investigation
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A terrifyingly prescient cult classic by the bestselling author of the Bernie Gunther series.
"Chilling...absorbing...part techno-thriller, part futuristic detective story, part diary of a serial killer."--The New York Times Book Review
LONDON, 2013. Serial killings have reached epidemic proportions--even with the widespread government use of DNA detection, brain-imaging, and the "punitive coma." Beautiful, whip-smart, and driven by demons of her own, Detective Isadora "Jake" Jacowicz must stop a murderer, code-named "Wittgenstein," who has taken it upon himself to eliminate any man who has tested positive for a tendency towards violent behavior--even if his victim has never committed a crime. He is a killer whose intellectual brilliance is matched only by his homicidal madness.
