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<\/a>In 13\u00a0books, Philip Kerr established detective Bernie Gunther as a German\u00a0noir \u00a0<\/em>detective equivalent to Raymond Chandler\u2019s Marlowe. He also established himself as not just a great mystery novelist but also one of the best novelists of his generation. Knowing that he was dying, he made a masterly stroke in a masterful career with his fourteenth book \u2014 he ended his career by taking us to the beginning of Bernie\u2019s career as a cop in Berlin.<\/p>\nIt\u2019s 1928 Berlin, and the city teems with prostitutes, World War I veterans begging on the streets and dangerous crime organizations. It also swells with authoritarianism, anti-Semitism, nationalism and incipient Nazi violence, all elements that will surge\u00a0through the 13 books that travel through the Nazi era and subside into the Cold War. Bernie begins his ride on that surge here, looking for someone who kills prostitutes, then scalps them. While he is working on that case, the killings stop, and someone starts shooting\u00a0veterans begging on the street, with a bullet to the head. Bernie shows flashes of his skill, a skill that will haunt him in his future when he has to use it for the Nazis. He intuits that it\u2019s the same person. Plunging into the netherworld of the streets, he goes looking for evidence. When one of his colleagues asks him what he\u2019s looking\u00a0for, Bernie answers he doesn\u2019t know, \u201c\u2026but I\u2019ll know it when I see it.\u201d\u00a0 It\u2019s this ability that will make him\u00a0indispensable to the Nazi hierarchy over the years. He will be of service to them while he tries to save his soul.<\/p>\n
All the while, Bernie\u00a0shows signs of struggle with booze and women \u2014 he can\u2019t avoid either. Fortunately, he discovers here the equilibrium that keeps him level most of the time in years to come. In the midst of the demi world of disadvantaged, he stops feeling sorry for himself. His life is not that bad, and \u201cYou can\u2019t put a price on good fortune.\u201d<\/p>\n
True to form, however, Bernie can\u2019t keep a good woman. Brigitte is the first, but not the last, to tell him that she can\u2019t stay with him. \u201c\u2026you can fake a smile, but you can\u2019t fake what\u2019s in those blue eyes.\u201d She doesn\u2019t like what she sees there, and she knows it will only get worse. We know it does.<\/p>\n
When he finds the killer, someone gets to him before Bernie does. \u201cJustice\u201d is done, but for the first time, Bernie realizes that the rule of law means more. He makes the decision to\u00a0stay on this side, and not join the evil to stop another evil. That dilemma occurs for him time and again, but this is the only time we hear him articulate the coda that carries him through the years:\u00a0 \u201cI have standards, and I try to\u00a0live up to them.\u201d It\u2019s that struggle that informs Kerr\u2019s well-wrought mysteries.<\/p>\n
His mysteries are also well informed by the factual landscape into which he weaves his fictional crimes. Every Kerr book is a history lesson, as he crams in locale, local police, actual criminal cases and historical characters. We bump into the artist George Grosz, we listen to Lotte Lenya rehearse \u201cThe Threepenny Opera,\u201d we visit the Sing Sing night club where the entertainment is an electric chair,\u00a0we tour the morgue, which is open to the public for viewing. Kerr then identifies these people and places in a lengthy note at the end.<\/p>\n
Metropolis\u00a0<\/em>stands as a capstone novel to the careers of Bernie Gunther and Philip Kerr. R.I.P., fellas.<\/p>\n <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" Reviewed by Robert P. Moyer I love it when Bob Moyer is in reading\/reviewing mode. So many books to add to my list…. METROPOLIS. By Philip Kerr. Putnam. 381 pages. $28. In 13\u00a0books, Philip Kerr established detective Bernie Gunther as a German\u00a0noir \u00a0detective equivalent to Raymond Chandler\u2019s Marlowe. He also established himself as not just […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[590,9,426,14],"tags":[314,1118,101,313],"class_list":["post-2510","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-detective-fiction-mysteries","category-historical-fiction","category-popular-fiction","category-thriller-suspense","tag-bernie-gunther","tag-detective-noir","tag-historical-fiction-2","tag-philip-kerr"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=2510"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2513,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2510\/revisions\/2513"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=2510"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=2510"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/lindabrinson.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=2510"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}